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BY  CHARLES  HORTON  COOLEY 


SOCIAL  PROCESS 

SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION:  A  STUDY  OF  THE 
LARGER  MIND 

HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  ORDER 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  ORDER 


BY 

CHARLES  HORTON  COOLEY 

PROFESSOR    OF    SOCIOLOGY    AT    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    MICHIGAN 


REVISED    EDITION 

WITH  AN   INTRODUCTION   TREATING   OF   THE   PLACE 

OF  HEREDITY  AND  INSTINCT  IN  HUMAN  LIFE 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK     CHICAGO     BOSTON 


Copyright,  1902,  1922.  by 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


,  sagi«  wu^.f ^ja^re 


PREFACE 

I  suppose  that  the  acceptance  this  book  has  found 
is  due  in  great  part  to  its  somewhat  novel  point  of 
view.  I  mean  that  it  is  a  treatise  on  Human  Nature 
by  one  who  is  not  primarily  a  psychologist  but  a  stu- 
dent of  society,  impelled  to  his  investigation  by  find- 
ing (as  it  seemed  to  him)  that  the  subject  had  never 
been  dealt  with  whole-heartedly  from  this  standpoint. 

The  work,  at  any  rate,  has  found  its  welcome  mainly 
as  a  help  in  the  study  of  Sociology;  and  it  is  with  a 
view  to  making  it  serve  this  purpose  better  that  I 
have  prepared  a  Students'  Edition,  adding  an  intro- 
ductory chapter  on  Heredity  and  Instinct,  enlarging 
the  chapter  on  Society  and  the  Individual,  and  in- 
serting other  matter  in  various  connections.  I  have 
also  appended  a  series  of  Study  Questions,  which  I 
hope  will  be  interesting  to  students  reading  by  them- 
selves, as  well  as  to  those  in  colleges. 

Charles  H.  Cooley. 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

HEREDITY  AND  INSTINCT 

PAGE 

The  Evolutionary  Point  of  View — Two  Channels  of  Life — 
What  We  Get  from  Heredity  and  What  from  Society — 
Our  Mode  of  Life  does  not  Alter  the  Heredity  of  our 
Children — Selection  in  Heredity — Eugenics — Heredity 
and  Progress — Interaction  of  Heredity  and  Social  En- 
vironment— Are  they  Antagonistic? — The  Teachability 
of  Human  Heredity — Long  Infancy — Teachable  He- 
redity Implies  a  Diverse  and  Changing  Life — -What  is 
Instinct  ? — Instinctive  Emotion  in  Man — Examples  of 
Instinctive  Emotional  Disposition — Human  Conduct 
Not  to  be  Explained  by  the  Direct  Working  of  Instinct 
— Reason  as  Organization  of  Plastic  Instinct— Human 
History — What  is  Human  Nature? — -Does  Human  Na- 
ture Change?   3 

CHAPTER   I 

SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

An  Organic  Relation — They  are  Aspects  of  the  Same  Thing 
— The  Fallacy  of  Setting  Them  in  Opposition — Various 
Forms  of  this  Fallacy — Familiar  Questions  and  How  they 
may  be  Answered 35 

CHAPTER  II 

SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

The  Meaning  of  these  Terms  and  their  Relation  to  Each 
Other — Individual  and  Social  Aspects  of  Will  or  Choice — 
Suggestion  and  Choice  in  Children — The  Scope  of  Sug- 
gestion Commonly  Underestimated — -Practical  Limita- 
tions upon  Deliberate  Choice — Illustrations  of  the 
Action  of  the  Milieu — -Class  Atmospheres— Our  Un- 
consciousness of  our  Epoch— The  Greater  or  Less  Ac- 
tivity of  Choice  Reflects  the  State  of  Society — Sug- 
gestibility     51 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  III 

SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

FAGI 

Aim  of  this  Chapter — The  Sociability  of  Children — 
Imaginary  Conversation  and  its  Significance — The  Na- 
ture of  the  Impulse  to  Communicate — There  is  no  Sepa- 
ration between  Real  and  Imaginary  Persons — Nor  be- 
tween Thought  and  Intercourse — The  Study  and  Inter- 
pretation of  Expression  by  Children — The  Symbol  or 
Sensuous  Nucleus  of  Personal  Ideas — Personal  Atmos- 
phere—Personal Physiognomy  in  Art  and  Literature — 
In  the  Idea  of  Social  Groups — Sentiment  in  Personal 
Ideas — The  Personal  Idea  is  the  Immediate  Social  Reality 
— Society  must  be  Studied  in  the  Imagination — The 
Possible  Reality  of  Incorporeal  Persons — The  Material 
Notion  of  Personality  Contrasted  with  the  Notion  Based 
on  a  Study  of  Personal  Ideas — Self  and  Other  in  Personal 
Ideas — Personal  Opposition — Further  Illustration  and 
Defense  of  the  View  of  Persons  and  of  Society  Here  Set 
Forth 81 

CHAPTER   IV 

SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING   AS  AN  ASPECT  OF  SOCIETY 

The  Meaning  of  Sympathy  as  here  Used — Its  Relation  to 
Thought,  Sentiment,  and  Social  Experience — The  Range 
of  Sympathy  is  a  Measure  of  Personality,  e.g.,  of 
Power,  of  Moral  Rank,  and  of  Sanity — A  Man's  Sym- 
pathies Reflect  the  State  of  the  Social  Order- — -Speciali- 
zation and  Breadth — Sympathy  Reflects  Social  Process 
in  the  Mingling  of  Likeness  with  Difference — Also  in 
that  it  is  a  Process  of  Selection  Guided  by  Feeling — The 
Meaning  of  Love  in  Social  Discussion — Love  in  Relation 
to  Self — The  Study  of  Sympathy  Reveals  the  Vital  Unity 
of  Human  Life 136 

CHAPTER   V 

THE  SOCIAL  SELF — 1.  THE  MEANING  OF  "i" 

The  "Empirical  Self" — "I"  as  a  State  of  Feeling — Its 
Relation  to  the  Body — As  a  Sense  of  Power  or  Causa- 
tion— As   a   Sense   of   Speciality   or    Differentiation    in 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

a  Social  Life  —  When  the  Body  is  "I";  Inanimate 
Objects — The  Reflected  or  Looking-glass  "I" — -"I"  is 
Rooted  in  the  Past  and  Varies  with  Social  Conditions — • 
Its  Relation  to  Habit — To  Disinterested  Love — -How 
Children  Learn  the  Meaning  of  "I"— The  Speculative 
or  Metaphysical  "I"  in  Children — The  Looking-glass 
"I"  in  Children — The  Same  in  Adolescence — -"I"  in  Re- 
lation to  Sex — Simplicity  and  Affectation — Social  Self- 
feeling  is  Universal — The  Group  Self  or  "  We  "     .      .      .     168 

CHAPTER    VI 

THE   SOCIAL   SELF — 2.    VARIOUS    PHASES    OF    "i" 

Egotism  and  Selfishness — The  Use  of  "I"  in  Literature  and 
Conversation — Intense  Self-feeling  Necessary  to  Produc- 
tivity— Other  Phases  of  the  Social  Self — Pride  versus 
Vanity — Self-respect,  Honor,  Self-reverence — Humility 
— Maladies  of  the  Social  Self — Withdrawal — Self-trans- 
formation— Phases  of  the  Self  Caused  by  Incongruity 
between  the  Person  and  his  Surroundings — The  Self  in 
Social  Problems 211 

CHAPTER    VII 

HOSTILITY 

Simple  or  Animal  Anger — Social  Anger — The  Function  of 
Hostility — The  Doctrine  of  Non-resistance — Control  and 
Transformation  of  Hostility  by  Reason — Hostility  as 
Pleasure  or  Pain — The  Importance  of  Accepted  Social 
Standards— Fear         . 264 

CHAPTER  VIII 

EMULATION 

Conformity — Non-Conformity — The  Two  Viewed  as  Com- 
plementary Phases  of  Life— Rivalry — Rivalry  in  Social 
Service — Conditions  under  which  Emulation  in  Service 
may  Prevail — Hero-worship 294 

CHAPTER   IX 

LEADERSHIP   OR   PERSONAL   ASCENDANCY 

Leadership  Defines  and  Organizes  Vague  Tendency — 
Power  as  Based  upon  the  Mental  State  of  the  One 
Subject  to  It — The  Mental  Traits  of  a  Leader:  Sig- 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

nificance  and  Breadth — Why  the  Fame  and  Power  of  a 
Man  often  Transcend  his  Real  Character — Ascendancy 
of  Belief  and  Hope — Mystery — Good  Faith  and  Impos- 
ture— Does  the  Leader  really  Lead? 317 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   SOCIAL   ASPECT   OF   CONSCIENCE 

The  Right  as  the  Rational — Significance  of  this  View — The 
Right  as  the  Onward — The  Right  as  Habit — Right  is  not 
the  Social  as  against  the  Individual — It  is,  in  a  Sense,  the 
Social  as  against  the  Sensual' — The  Right  as  a  Synthesis 
of  Personal  Influences — Personal  Authority — Confession, 
Prayer,  Publicity — Truth — Dependence  of  Right  upon 
Imagination — Conscience  Reflects  a  Social  Group — Ideal 
Persons  as  Factors  in  Conscience — Some  Ideas  of  Right 
are  Universal 358 

CHAPTER   XI 

PERSONAL   DEGENERACY 

Is  a  Phase  of  the  Question  of  Right  and  Wrong — Relation 
to  the  Idea  of  Development — Justification  and  Meaning 
of  the  Phrase  "Personal  Degeneracy" — Hereditary  and 
Social  Factors  in  Personal  Degeneracy — Degeneracy  as 
a  Mental  Trait — Conscience  in  Degeneracy — Group 
Degeneracy — Crime,  Insanity,  and  Responsibility — 
Practical  Effect  of  the  Organic  View  Upon  Responsibility 
— Upon  Punishment 402 

CHAPTER  XII 

FREEDOM 

The  Meaning  of  Freedom — Freedom  and  Discipline — 
Freedom  as  a  Phase  of  the  Social  Order — Freedom  In- 
volves Incidental  Strain  and  Degeneracy        ....     422 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 435 

INDEX 451 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL 
ORDER 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE 
SOCIAL  ORDER 

INTRODUCTION 
HEREDITY  AND  INSTINCT 

THE    EVOLUTIONARY   POINT   OF  VIEW — TWO   CHANNELS   OF   LIFE — 

WHAT  WE  GET  FROM  HEREDITY  AND  WHAT  FROM  SOCIETY OUR 

MODE  OF  LIFE  DOES  NOT  ALTER  THE  HEREDITY  OF  OUR  CHIL- 
DREN—SELECTION IN  HEREDITY — -EUGENICS — -HEREDITY  AND 
PROGRESS INTERACTION  OF  HEREDITY  AND  SOCIAL  ENVIRON- 
MENT  ARE      THEY      ANTAGONISTIC? THE      TEACHABILITY      OF 

HUMAN  HEREDITY — LONG  INFANCY— TEACHABLE  HEREDITY  IM- 
PLIES   A    DIVERSE    AND   CHANGING   LIFE — WHAT   IS   INSTINCT? 

INSTINCTIVE     EMOTION     IN     MAN EXAMPLES     OF     INSTINCTIVE 

EMOTIONAL  DISPOSITION — HUMAN  CONDUCT  NOT  TO  BE  EX- 
PLAINED BY  THE  DIRECT  WORKING  OF  INSTINCT — REASON  AS 
ORGANIZATION  OF  PLASTIC  INSTINCT— HUMAN  HISTORY — WHAT 
IS  HUMAN  NATURE?      DOES  HUMAN  NATURE  CHANGE? 

We  have  come  in  recent  years  to  look  upon  all 
questions  of  human  life  from  an  evolutionary  point  of 
view.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  recall  something  of 
what  that  phrase  means. 

It  means,  for  one  thing,  that  all  our  life  has  a  history, 
that  nothing  happens  disconnectedly,  that  everything 
we  are  or  do  is  part  of  a  current  coming  down  from  the 
remote  past.  Every  word  we  say,  every  movement 
we  make,  every  idea  we  have,  and  every  feeling,  is,  in 
one  way  or  another,  an  outcome  of  what  our  predeces- 

3 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sors  have  said  or  done  or  thought  or  felt  in  past  ages. 
There  is  an  actual  historical  continuity  from  their 
life  to  ours,  and  we  are  constantly  trying  to  trace 
this  history,  to  see  how  things  come  about,  in 
order  that  we  may  understand  them  better  and  may 
learn  to  bring  to  pass  those  things  we  regard  as  de- 
sirable. 

It  means  also  that  if  we  go  far  enough  back  we  find 
that  man  and  the  other  animals  have  a  common 
history,  that  both  sprang  remotely  from  a  common 
ancestry  in  lower  forms  of  life,  and  that  we  cannot 
have  clear  ideas  of  our  own  life  except  as  we  study  it 
on  the  animal  side  and  see  how  and  in  what  respects 
we  have  risen  above  the  condition  of  our  cousins  the 
horses,  dogs,  and  apes.  Life,  it  appears,  is  all  one 
great  whole,  a  kinship,  unified  by  a  common  descent 
and  by  common  principles  of  existence;  and  our  part 
in  it  will  not  be  understood  unless  we  can  see,  in 
a  general  way  at  least,  how  it  is  related  to  other 
parts. 

The  stream  of  this  life-history,  whose  sources  are 
so  remote  and  whose  branchings  so  various,  appears 
to  flow  in  two  rather  distinct  channels.  Or  perhaps 
we  might  better  say  that  there  is  a  stream  and  a  road 
running  along  the  bank — two  lines  of  transmission. 
The  stream  is  heredity  or  animal  transmission;  the 
road  is  communication  or  social  transmission.  One 
flows  through  the  germ-plasm;  the  other  comes  by 
way  of  language,  intercourse,  and  education.  The 
road  is  more  recent  than  the  stream:  it  is  an  improve- 

4 


INTRODUCTION 

ment  that  did  not  exist  at  all  in  the  earliest  flow  of 
animal  life,  but  appears  later  as  a  vague  trail  along- 
side the  stream,  becomes  more  and  more  distinct  and 
travelled,  and  finally  develops  into  an  elaborate  high- 
way, supporting  many  kinds  of  vehicles  and  a  traffic 
fully  equal  to  that  of  the  stream  itself. 

How  does  this  idea  apply  to  the  life  of  a  given  indi- 
vidual— of  you  or  me,  for  example  ?  His  body — and  his 
mind  too,  for  that  matter — begins  in  a  minute,  almost 
microscopic,  bit  of  substance,  a  cell,  formed  by  the 
union  of  cells  coming  from  the  bodies  of  his  parents, 
and  containing,  in  some  way  not  yet  understood,  ten- 
dencies which  reach  back  through  his  grandparents 
and  remoter  ancestors  over  indefinite  periods  of  time. 
This  is  the  hereditary  channel  of  his  life,  and  the  special 
kind  of  cells  in  which  heredity  is  conveyed — called 
the  germ-plasm — are  apparently  the  only  source  of 
those  currents  of  being,  those  dispositions,  capacities, 
potentialities,  that  each  of  us  has  at  the  beginning  of 
his  course. 

The  social  origin  of  his  life  comes  by  the  pathway  of 
intercourse  with  other  persons.  It  reaches  him  at 
first  through  his  susceptibility  to  touches,  tones  of 
voice,  gesture,  and  facial  expression;  later  through  his 
gradually  acquired  understanding  of  speech.  Speech 
he  learns  from  his  family  and  playmates,  who,  in  turn, 
had  it  from  their  elders,  and  so  it  goes  back  to  the 
earliest  human  history,  and  farther  still  to  the  inarticu- 
late cries  of  our  pre-human  ancestors.  And  it  is  the 
same  with  the  use  of  tools,  with  music,  art,  religion, 
commerce,  and  whatever  else  he  may  learn  to  think 

5 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  do.  All  is  a  social  heritage  from  the  immemorial 
past. 

We  may  distinguish  these  two  lines  of  history  more 
clearly,  perhaps,  if  we  take  a  case  where  they  are  not 
parallel,  where  the  road  over  which  we  get  our  social 
heritage  has  not  followed  the  stream  from  which  we 
get  our  animal  heritage,  but  has  switched  off,  as  it 
were,  from  another  stream.  Suppose,  for  example, 
that  an  American  family  in  China  adopts  a  Chinese 
baby  and  brings  it  home  to  grow  up  in  America.  The 
animal  life-history  of  that  baby's  past  will  lie  in  China. 
It  will  have  the  straight  black  hair,  the  yellowish  skin 
and  other  physical  traits  of  the  Chinese  people,  and 
also  any  mental  tendencies  that  may  be  part  of  their 
heredity.  But  his  social  past  will  lie  in  America,  be- 
cause he  will  get  from  the  people  about  him  the  Eng- 
lish speech  and  the  customs,  manners,  and  ideas  that 
have  been  developed  in  this  country.  He  will  fall  heir 
to  the  American  political,  religious,  educational,  and 
economic  institutions;  his  whole  mind  will  be  an  Ameri- 
can mind,  excepting  only  for  the  difference  (if  there 
is  any)  between  his  inherited  aptitude  to  learn  such 
things  and  that  of  other  American  children.  The 
Chinese  stream  and  the  American  road  have  come  to- 
gether in  his  life. 

If  there  were  two  such  babies — twins,  let  us  say,  and 
almost  exactly  alike  at  birth — one  of  whom  remained 
in  China  while  the  other  was  brought  to  America,  they 
would  grow  up  alike  physically,  and  also,  probably,  in 
temperament,  as  active  or  sluggish,  thoughtful  or 
impetuous,   but  would  be  wholly  different  in  dress, 

6 


INTRODUCTION 

language,  and  ideas.  In  these  the  child  bred  in 
America  would  be  far  more  like  his  American  foster- 
brothers  than  like  his  twin-brother  in  China. 

Just  what  is  it  that  we  get  through  the  germ-plasm, 
as  distinguished  from  what  we  get  by  social  transmis- 
sion? The  former  is  evidently  the  main  source  of  our 
bodily  traits.  The  child  of  a  dark  race  will  be  dark  no 
matter  in  what  society  he  grows  up,  and  will  have  also 
whatever  peculiarities  as  regards  hair,  shape  of  head, 
height,  and  the  like  belong  to  the  racial  type  from  which 
his  germ-plasm  comes.  Nor  is  there  any  doubt,  though 
it  is  not  so  obvious,  that  he  gets  from  this  source  his 
original  mental  endowment.  A  child  of  feeble-minded 
ancestors  is  usually  feeble-minded  also,  and  one  whose 
parents  had  unusual  ability  is  apt  to  resemble  them. 
Heredity  brings  us  not  only  tendencies  to  a  definite 
sort  of  physical  development,  but  also  capacity,  apti- 
tude, disposition,  lines  of  teachability,  or  whatever 
else  we  may  call  the  vague  psychical  tendencies  that 
all  of  us  are  born  with. 

And  from  social  transmission,  through  the  environ- 
ment, come  all  the  stimulation  and  teaching  which 
cause  these  tendencies  to  develop  in  a  definite  form, 
which  lead  us  to  speak  a  particular  language,  to  develop 
one  set  of  ideas  or  kind  of  ambition  rather  than  an- 
other, to  feel  patriotism  for  America  rather  than  for 
England  or  Italy.  Everything  in  the  way  of  specific 
function  must  be  learned  in  this  way,  no  matter  what 
ability  we  have.  When  we  say  that  a  child  is  a  born 
musician  we  mean,  not  that  he  can  play  or  compose  by 

7 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nature  alone,  but  that  if  he  has  the  right  kind  of  teach- 
ing he  can  rapidly  develop  power  in  this  direction.  In 
this  sense  and  in  no  other  can  a  man  be  a  born  lawyer, 
or  teacher,  or  poet,  or,  if  you  please,  a  born  counterfeiter 
or  burglar.  I  knew  a  family  in  which  the  boys  had 
a  remarkable  aptitude  for  football,  several  of  them  be- 
coming distinguished  players,  but  certainly  unless 
they  had  all  been  sent  to  college,  and  to  one  in  which 
football  ability  was  prized  and  encouraged,  this  apti- 
tude would  never  have  been  discovered. 

It  is  an  important  question  whether  our  mode  of 
life  alters  the  heredity  that  we  transmit  to  our  children, 
whether,  for  example,  if  I  devote  myself  to  study  this 
fact  will  so  affect  the  germ-plasm  that  my  children 
are  likely  to  have  more  mental  capacity.  The  pre- 
vailing scientific  opinion  is  that  it  does  not,  that,  of 
two  brothers,  one  who  is  uneducated,  but  of  the  same 
natural  ability,  is  as  likely  to  have  bright  children  as 
one  who  goes  to  college  and  enters  an  intellectual 
profession.  An  athlete  will  not  have  stronger  children 
because  of  his  training. 

An  obvious  ground  for  this  view  is  that  injuries  or 
mutilations,  such  as  the  loss  of  a  leg,  are  never  in- 
herited, not  even  if  they  are  continued  for  generations, 
as  was  formerly  the  case  with  the  feet-binding  of  cer- 
tain classes  of  Chinese  women.  Nor  do  defects  due 
to  a  non-hereditary  cause,  like  the  deafness  that  often 
follows  scarlet  fever,  affect  the  offspring.  In  fact,  not- 
withstanding much  research,  no  one  has  been  able  to 
produce  any  satisfactory  proof  that  "acquired  traits," 


INTRODUCTION 

that  is  those  due  to  the  mode  of  life,  are  ever  trans- 
mitted through  the  germ-plasm. 

As  regards  the  theory  of  the  matter,  it  is  thought 
that,  heredity  being  carried  by  the  germ-plasm,  and 
this  being  a  special  kind  of  cells  not  affected  by  our 
particular  mode  of  life,  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
latter  should  change  heredity.  The  germ-plasm,  it  is 
believed,  bears  individuals  somewhat  as  a  tree  bears 
fruit,  but  they  do  not  react  upon  it;  they  merely  carry 
it  and  hand  it  on,  as  the  apple  carries  the  seed. 

If  this  is  true  (and  the  evidence  is  so  strong  that  we 
may  at  least  accept  it  as  the  most  probable  theory  to 
work  by)  it  follows  that  we  cannot  improve  the  strictly 
hereditary  factor  in  future  children  by  teaching  their 
parents,  or  even  by  bettering  the  life  of  the  latter  in 
any  or  all  respects.  It  does  not  follow,  however,  that 
the  germ-plasm  will  remain  unchanged,  even  if  we  our- 
selves cannot  change  it.  Apparently  there  is  growth, 
or  intrinsic  change  of  some  sort,  going  on  in  all  life, 
and  it  is  natural  to  presume  that  the  germ-plasm  is  no 
exception.  We  need  not  suppose  that  nothing  takes 
place  in  it  but  a  mechanical  recombination  of  ances- 
tral elements:  there  are  probably  changes,  but  as  yet 
we  know  little  of  their  character.  If  one  believes,  in 
general,  that  life  is  mechanical  and  predetermined,  one 
will  naturally  apply  this  idea  to  heredity  as  well  as 
elsewhere,  but  if  he  believes  that  it  is  in  some  sense 
free  and  creative,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  heredi- 
tary current  should  not  share  in  these  traits. 

It  is  possible  even  if  our  mode  of  life  has  no  direct 
effect  upon  heredity,  for  us  to  influence  it  by  an  in- 

9 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

direct  process  known  as  Selection.  This  is  based  upon 
the  fact  that  the  germ-plasm  carried  by  one  individual 
may  differ  considerably  from  that  carried  by  another, 
even  in  the  same  family,  and  varies  widely  as  between 
different  families,  and  still  more  widely  as  between 
different  races;  although  all  may  have  remotely  a  com- 
mon ancestry.  If,  then,  we  know  what  sort  of  germ- 
plasm  a  certain '  individual  or  family  or  race  carries, 
and  can  increase  or  decrease  the  number  of  children 
inheriting  it,  we  can  change,  more  or  less,  the  propor- 
tion which  this  kind  of  heredity  bears  to  other  kinds. 

An  obvious  case  is  where  two  contrasted  races  are 
concerned.  Suppose,  for  example,  there  is  a  Southern 
county  in  which  there  are  five  thousand  negroes  and 
five  thousand  whites,  and  that  the  average  number  of 
children  raised  in  negro  and  white  families  is  about  the 
same.  Now  if,  in  some  way,  you  can  cause  the  white 
families  to  raise  more  children,  or  the  negroes  fewer, 
the  complexion  of  the  county  will  gradually  be  altered. 
If  the  rate  becomes  as  three  to  two  in  favor  of  the 
whites,  there  will  be  three  white  children  to  two  black 
in  the  next  generation,  f  x  f ,  or  nine  to  four  in  the 
generation  following,  and  so  on  in  a  geometrical  ratio. 
The  negroes  will  become  a  rapidly  dwindling  fraction 
of  the  population. 

If,  instead  of  having  two  distinct  races  in  the  county, 
we  had  merely  the  white  race,  in  which,  however,  there 
was  a  considerable  difference  of  complexion  among  the 
family  stocks  represented,  something  analogous  might 
still  take  place.  If  the  dark  families  were  more  pro- 
lific than  the  blonde,  the  population  would  darken,  or 

10 


INTRODUCTION 

vice  versa.  And  even  in  the  same  family  there  might 
be  differences  in  this  respect  which  could  be  increased 
or  diminished  by  selection.  There  is  no  doubt  that, 
starting  with  a  mixed  population  and  being  able  to 
control  mating  and  the  number  of  children,  we  could 
in  this  way  breed  dark  or  light  people,  tall  or  short, 
blue-eyed  or  black-eyed,  bright  or  dull,  and  indeed  in- 
crease or  diminish  any  hereditary  trait  ascertainable 
enough  to  be  made  the  basis  of  selection. 

It  is  believed  that  the  conditions  of  life  are  all  the 
time  tending  to  cause  some  types  of  heredity  to  pro- 
duce more  children  than  other  types,  and  so  by  an 
unconscious  process  to  alter  the  germ-plasm  in  the 
group  as  a  whole.  For  example,  the  frontier  conditions 
in  the  early  history  of  America  probably  tended  to  pro- 
duce a  physically  vig  rous  race;  not  because  the  under- 
going 'of  hardships  had  any  direct  effect  upon  the  germ- 
plasm,  but  because  the  weaker  sort  of  people  would  be 
likely  to  die  out  under  these  hardships,  and  leave  no 
children  to  inherit  their  weakness,  while  the  stronger 
sort  would  leave  large  families  and  correspondingly  in- 
crease the  sort  of  germ-plasm  that  they  carried — in 
other  words  by  "natural  selection"  or  "the  survival 
of  the  fittest."  This  process  may  in  time  produce 
very  great  changes.  The  difference  in  color  between 
the  black  and  white  races  (which  are  undoubtedly 
sprung  from  a  common  ancestry)  is  plausibly  explained, 
on  the  principle  of  natural  selection,  by  supposing  that 
darker  skins  were  associated  with  greater  power  of  re- 
sistance to  the  heat  of  the  sun,  or  to  the  diseases  of 
tropical  climates,  so  that  this  kind  of  heredity  would 

11 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

increase  in  such  climates;  just  as  many  species  of 
animals  are  known  to  develop  colors  that  help  their 
survival.  Most  animals,  including  birds,  are  so  col- 
ored as  to  be  hard  to  distinguish  from  their  environ- 
ment: it  is  a  kind  of  camouflage,  and  helps  them  to 
escape  the  enemies  who  would  otherwise  devour  them, 
or  to  approach  the  prey  which  would  otherwise  escape 
them. 

It  was  by  natural  selection  mainly,  according  to  Dar- 
win, that  the  various  species  of  plants  and  animals 
were  gradually  moulded  to  fit  the  conditions  under 
which  they  had  to  live,  and  any  one  who  wishes  to 
know  something  fundamental  about  evolution  should 
read  at  least  the  first  six  chapters  of  his  Origin  of  Species. 
And  in  his  Descent  of  Man  one  may  see  how  he  worked 
out  this  idea  in  its  application  to  the  development  of 
the  human  race. 

But  why  not  make  selection  conscious  and  intelli- 
gent, and  thus  improve  the  stock  of  men  somewhat  as 
we  do  that  of  domestic  animals?  There  has,  in  fact, 
arisen  a  science  of  Eugenics,  or  Race-Improvement, 
seeking  to  stimulate  the  propagation  of  desirable  types 
of  human  heredity  and  prevent  that  of  undesirable 
types.  There  are  many  difficulties  in  this,  and  it  is 
not  clear  how  much  we  may  expect  to  accomplish,  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  some  things  can  and  should  be 
done.  Scientific  tests  should  be  made  of  all  children 
to  ascertain  those  that  are  feeble-minded  or  otherwise 
hopelessly  below  a  normal  capacity,  followed  by  a 
study  of  their  families  to  find  whether  these  defects 

12 


INTRODUCTION 

are  hereditary.  If  it  appears  that  they  are,  the  indi- 
viduals having  them  should,  as  they  grow  older,  be 
prevented  from  having  children  to  inherit  their  inca- 
pacity. At  present,  owing  to  our  ignorance  and  care- 
lessness in  this  regard,  large  numbers  of  children  are 
coming  into  the  world  with  the  handicap  to  themselves 
and  the  menace  to  society  of  an  ineradicable  inferiority. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  educated  and  prosperous 
classes  show  a  tendency  to  limit  the  number  of  their 
children  that  is  often  spoken  of  as  Race-Suicide.  This 
limitation  appears  to  be  due  partly  to  the  taste  for 
ease  and  luxury  fostered  by  wealth,  partly  to  increasing 
social  ambition  and  greater  desire  for  self-develop- 
ment. These  latter,  excellent  no  doubt  in  themselves, 
draw  upon  our  means  and  energy,  and  are  apt  to  cause 
us  to  postpone  marriage  or  to  have  fewer  children  after 
marriage  than  we  otherwise  would.  Since  they  grow 
with  democracy,  it  may  well  be  that  democracy  an- 
tagonizes the  birth-rate. 

It  takes  an  average  of  nearly  four  children  to  a  family 
to  keep  up  the  numbers  of  a  hereditary  stock,  and  more 
to  maintain  its  proportion  of  an  increasing  population 
like  that  of  the  United  States.  This  is  because  there 
must  be  enough  not  only  to  replace  the  two  parents 
and  provide  for  the  increase,  if  any,  but  also  to  com- 
pensate for  failure  of  propagation  by  the  unmarried, 
the  sterile,  and  those  who  die  prematurely. 

The  upper  classes  are  falling  far  short  of  their  quota, 
and  if  we  assume  that  they  represent  the  abler  stocks 
it  would  seem  that  the  race  is  being  impaired  by  their 
diminution.     Is  it  not  desirable,  and  perhaps  practica- 

13 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ble,  to  induce  them  to  become  more  prolific?  Even  if 
they  do  not  represent  abler  stocks  than  the  middle 
class,  is  there  not  danger  that  the  small-family  tendency 
will  pervade  that  class  also?  It  has  already  done  so 
in  France.  Many  people  are  alarmed  also  by  observ- 
ing that  the  immigrant  stocks  in  the  northern  and 
eastern  states  are  multiplying  faster  than  the  native 
stocks,  and  that  the  negroes  are  kept  from  outrunning 
the  whites  only  by  their  high  death-rate.  Others  give 
their  apprehensions  a  still  wider  range  and  see  an  im- 
minent Yellow  Peril  in  the  fecundity  of  the  oriental 
peoples,  which  threatens,  they  think,  to  put  an  early 
end  to  the  ascendancy  of  the  white  races  and  of  white 
civilization. 

Although  improvements  in  our  mode  of  life  probably 
do  not  alter  heredity,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  they 
are  unimportant,  or  less  important  than  eugenics. 
In  fact,  progress,  as  ordinarily  understood,  does  not 
require  any  change  in  heredity,  but  is  a  development 
of  knowledge,  arts,  and  institutions  that  takes  place 
in  the  social  process  with  little  or  no  alteration  of  the 
germ-plasm.  The  spread  of  education,  the  abolition 
of  slavery,  the  growth  of  railroads,  telegraphs,  tele- 
phones, and  automobiles,  the  formation  of  a  society 
of  nations  and  the  abolition  of  war — all  this  kind  of 
thing  is  social  and  may  go  on  indefinitely  with  no  im- 
provement in  heredity.  Nevertheless  better  heredity 
would  make  progress  more  rapid,  because  it  would 
give  us  more  men  of  talent  as  leaders  and  a  higher 
average  of  ability.  And  a  worse  heredity,  such  as 
many  think  we  are  in  danger  of,  would  hinder  progress 

14 


INTRODUCTION 

and  possibly,  in  time,  put  an  end  to  it  altogether. 
Social  improvement  and  eugenics  are  a  team  that 
should  be  driven  abreast. 

When  our  individual  life  begins  the  two  elements  of 
history  from  which  it  is  drawn,  the  hereditary  and  the 
social,  merge  in  the  new  whole  and  cease  to  exist  as 
separable  forces.  Nothing  that  the  individual  is  or 
does  can  be  ascribed  to  either  alone,  because  every- 
thing is  based  on  habits  and  experiences  in  which  the 
two  are  inextricably  mingled.  Heredity  and  environ- 
ment, as  applied  to  the  present  life  of  a  human  being, 
are,  in  fact,  abstractions;  the  real  thing  is  a  total  or- 
ganic process  not  separable  into  parts.  What  heredity 
is,  in  its  practical  working  at  a  given  time,  depends 
upon  the  process  itself,  which  develops  some  potenti- 
alities and  represses  others.  And  in  like  manner  the 
effective  environment  depends  upon  the  selective  and 
assimilating  activities  of  the  growing  organism.  If 
you  wish  to  understand  it  the  main  thing  to  do  is  to 
study  its  life-history  back  to  its  beginning  in  the  con- 
ception and  birth  of  the  individual;  beyond  that  you 
ma}',  if  you  wish,  pursue  still  farther  the  germ-plasm 
and  the  social  inheritance  from  which  it  sprang. 
These  give  us  a  background,  like  the  accounts  of  a 
man's  ancestry  and  early  surroundings  in  the  first 
chapters  of  his  biography.  But  the  life  of  William 
Sykes  is  a  thing  you  must  study  directly,  and  no 
knowledge  of  heredity  and  environment  can  be  more 
than  a  help  to  this.* 

*  An  old  fallacy,  but  one  constantly  recurring,  is  that  we  can 
in  some  way  measure  the  hereditary  factor  in  the  human  mind 

15 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Speech  well  illustrates  the  inextricable  union  of  the 
animal  and  social  heritages.  It  springs  in  part  from 
the  native  structure  of  the  vocal  organs  and  from  a 
hereditary  impulse  to  use  them  which  we  see  at  work 
in  the  chattering  of  idiots  and  of  the  deaf  and  dumb. 
A  natural  sensibility  to  other  persons  and  need  to 
communicate  with  them  also  enters  into  it.  But  all 
articulate  utterance  comes  by  communication;  it  is 
learned  from  others,  varies  with  the  environment  and 
has  its  source  in  tradition.  Speech  is  thus  a  socio- 
biologic  function.  And  so  it  is  with  ambition  and  all 
our  socially  active  impulses:  We  are  born  with  the 
need  to  assert  ourselves,  but  whether  we  do  so  as  hun- 
ters, warriors,  fishermen,  traders,  politicians,  or  schol- 
ars, depends  upon  the  opportunities  offered  us  in  the 
social  process. 

Evidently  it  is  wrong,  speaking  generally,  to  regard 
heredity  and  social  environment  as  antagonistic.  They 
are  normally  complementary,  each  having  its  own  work 
to  do  and  neither  of  any  use  without  the  other. 

Which  is  stronger?  Which  is  more  important? 
These  are  silly  questions,  the  asking  of  which  is  suffi- 
cient proof  that  the  asker  has  no  clear  idea  of  the 

apart  from  the  social  or  acquired  factor.  Thus  some  writers 
have  claimed  that  mental  tests  in  the  army  were  a  measure  of 
natural  intelligence,  independent  of  social  environment,  and 
that  they  prove  the  hereditary  inferiority  of  certain  nationali- 
ties among  those  measured.  But  since  the  growth  of  the  mind 
is  altogether  a  social  process  (compare  Chapter  III)  it  is  unrea- 
sonable to  suppose  that  the  outcome  can  be  in  any  way  indepen- 
dent of  that  process.  And  in  fact  the  results  of  these  tests  can  be 
explained  quite  as  plausibly  by  differences  in  language,  family 
life,  education,  and  occupation,  as  by  heredity. 

16 


INTRODUCTION 

matter  in  hand.  It  is  precisely  as  if  one  should  ask, 
Which  is  the  more  important  member  of  the  family, 
the  father  or  the  mother?  Both  may  be  said  to  be 
infinitely  important,  since  each  is  indispensable;  and 
their  functions  being  different  in  kind  cannot  be  com- 
pared in  amount. 

Shall  we  say,  then,  that  all  discussions  as  to  the  re- 
lation between  heredity  and  environment  are  futile? 
By  no  means  The  fact  is  that,  although  it  is  plain 
that  they  are,  in  general,  complementary  and  mutually 
dependent,  we  usually  do  not  know  precisely  what 
each  contributes  in  a  given  case,  and  so  may  be  in 
doubt  whether  to  seek  improvement  by  working  on 
the  germ-plasm  or  through  social  influence.  It  is 
only  with  reference  to  general  theory  that  the  question 
which  i>  more  important  is  silly.  With  reference  to  a 
specific  problem  it  may  be  quite  pertinent — just  as  it 
might  be  quite  pertinent,  as  regards  the  troubles  of  a 
specific  family,  to  inquire  whether  you  could  best 
reach  them  through  the  father  or  through  the  mother. 
And  while  direct  measurement  of  the  factors,  at  least 
where  the  mind  is  involved,  is  impossible,  since  they 
have  no  separate  existence,  there  may  be  roundabout 
methods  of  inference  which  throw  real  light  upon  the 
matter. 

Many  race  questions  are  of  this  sort.  There  are, 
for  instance,  great  differences  between  the  Japanese 
and  the  Americans.  Some  of  these,  as  language,  re- 
ligion, moral  standards,  are  clearly  social  and  may  be 
altered  by  education.  Some,  as  stature,  color  and 
shape  of  the  eyes,  are  certain' y  hereditary  and  cannot 

17 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

be  altered  by  education:  these,  however,  are,  in  them- 
selves, perhaps,  of  no  great  importance.  But  are  there 
also,  or  are  there  not,  subtle  differences  of  tempera- 
ment, mental  capacity  or  emotional  gifts,  which  are 
both  hereditary  and  important,  which  render  the 
races  incapable  of  living  together  in  peace,  or  make 
one  of  them  superior  to  the  other?  We  do  not  know 
the  answer  to  this  question,  though  it  is  most  important 
that  we  should.  It  is  the  same  with  the  negro  ques- 
tion. How  far  is  the  present  inferior  condition  of  that 
race  remediable  by  education  and  social  improvement, 
how  far  is  it  a  matter  of  the  germ-plasm,  alterable  only 
by  selection?  The  whole  negro-white  problem  hinges  on 
this  question,  which  we  cannot  answer  with  assurance. 
There  is  an  analogous  problem  with  reference  to 
criminals.  How  far,  or  in  just  what  sorts  of  cases, 
may  we  safely  trust  to  educational  or  deterrent  methods 
as  a  preventive  of  crime?  Should  we  also  try  to  pre- 
vent propagation,  and,  if  so,  when  and  how?  And  so 
with  men  of  genius.  We  need  more  of  them.  Will 
education  do  it,  or  shall  we  follow  the  teaching  of 
Galton,  the  founder  of  eugenics,  who  held  that  we  must 
above  all  things  induce  men  of  great  ability  to  have 
more  children?  And  again,  with  reference  to  the  rich 
and  powerful  classes.  Is  their  ascendancy  that  of 
natural  ability,  of  a  superior  breed,  and  so,  perhaps, 
just  and  beneficial?  Or  is  it  based  on  social  privileges 
in  the  way  of  education  and  opportunity,  and  hence, 
as  many  think,  unfair  and  detrimental?  Unsolved 
questions  of  this  kind  arise  whenever  we  try  to  make 
out  just  how  we  may  better  the  course  of  human  life. 
At  present  the  best  we  can  do  is  to  try  everything 

18 


INTRODUCTION 

that  seems  likely  to  improve  either  the  germ-plasm  or 
the  social  process. 

Although  the  transmission  of  heredity  through  the 
germ-plasm  is  much  the  same  in  man  as  in  the  other 
animals,  there  is  a  notable  difference  in  the  kind  of 
traits  that  are  transmitted,  and  are  found  to  exist 
at  birth.  This  difference  is  in  teachability  or  plasticity. 
The  mental  outfit  of  the  human  child  is  above  all 
things  teachable,  and  therefore,  of  course,  indefinite, 
consisting  not  of  tendencies  to  do  particular  things 
that  life  calls  for,  but  of  vague  aptitudes  or  lines  of 
teachability  that  are  of  no  practical  use  until  they  a  e 
educated.  The  mental  outfit  of  the  animal,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  relatively  definite  and  fixed,  giving  rise 
to  activities  which  are  useful  with  little  or  no  teaching. 

This  difference  is  fundamental  to  any  understanding 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  the  evolutionary  process,  or 
of  the  relation  of  human  nature  and  human  life  to 
animal  nature  and  animal  life.  We  need  to  see  it  with 
all  possible  clearness  and  to  follow  out  its  implications. 

Roughly  speaking,  then,  the  heredity  of  the  other 
animals  is  a  mechanism  like  that  of  a  hand-organ:  it 
is  made  to  play  a  few  tunes;  you  can  play  these  tunes 
at  once,  with  little  or  no  training;  and  you  can  never 
play  any  others.  The  heredity  of  man,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  mechanism  more  like  that  of  a  piano:  it  is 
not  made  to  play  particular  tunes;  you  can  do  nothing 
at  all  on  it  without  training;  but  a  trained  player  can 
draw  from  it  an  infinite  variety  of  music. 

A  newly  hatched  chick  is  able  to  run  about  and  to 
pick  up  small  objects  of  a  certain  size  and  form  which 

19 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

prove  to  be  food,  and  to  sustain  its  life.  It  scarcely 
needs  education,  and  I  am  told  by  a  breeder  that  the 
product  of  the  incubator,  having  no  link  with  the  past 
of  their  race  except  the  germ-plasm,  get  along  as  well 
as  those  that  have  all  a  mother's  care.  A  baby,  on 
the  other  hand,  takes  a  year  to  learn  to  walk,  and 
man}',  many  more  years  to  learn  the  activities  by  which 
he  is  eventually  to  get  his  living.  He  has,  to  be  sure, 
a  definite  capacity  to  draw  nourishment  from  his 
mother,  but  this  is  only  a  makeshift,  an  animal  method 
to  help  him  out  until  his  more  human  powers  have  time 
to  develop.  In  general,  his  wonderful  hereditary  ca- 
pacities are  as  ineffectual  as  a  piano  when  the  player 
begins  to  practise.  Definite  function  is  wholly  de- 
pendent upon  education. 

Thus  the  plastic,  indeterminate  character  of  human 
heredity  involves  a  long  and  helpless  infancy;  and 
this,  in  turn,  is  the  basis  of  the  human  family,  since 
the  primary  and  essential  function  of  the  family  is  the 
care  of  children.  Those  species  of  animals  in  which 
the  young  are  adequately  prepared  for  life  by  definite 
heredity  have  no  family  at  all,  while  those  which  more 
or  less  resemble  man  as  regards  plastic  heredity,  re- 
semble him  also  in  having  some  rudiments,  at  least,  of 
a  family.  Kittens,  for  instance,  are  cared  for  by  the 
mother  for  several  months  and  profit  in  some  measure 
by  her  example  and  instruction. 

More  generally,  this  difference  as  regards  plasticity 
means  that  the  life-activities  of  the  animal  are  com- 

20 


INTRODUCTION 

paratively  uniform  and  fixed,  while  those  of  man  are 
varied  and  changing.  Human  functions  are  so  nu- 
merous and  intricate  that  no  fixed  mechanism  could 
provide  for  them:  they  are  also  subject  to  radical 
change,  not  only  in  the  life  of  the  individual  but  from 
one  generation  to  another.  The  only  possible  heredi- 
tary basis  for  them  is  an  outfit  of  indeterminate  ca- 
pacities which  can  be  developed  and  guided  by  expe- 
rience as  the  needs  of  life  require. 

I  see  a  flycatcher  sitting  on  a  dead  branch,  where 
there  are  no  leaves  to  interrupt  his  view.  Presently 
he  darts  toward  a  passing  insect,  hovers  about  him  a 
few  seconds,  catches  him,  or  fails  to  do  so,  and  returns 
to  his  perch.  That  is  his  way  of  getting  a  living:  he 
has  done  it  all  his  life  and  will  go  on  doing  it  to  the 
end.  Millions  of  other  flycatchers  on  millions  of  other 
dead  branches  are  doing  precisely  the  same.  And  this 
has  been  the  life  of  the  species  for  unknown  thousands 
of  years.  They  have,  through  the  germ-plasm,  a  defi- 
nite capacity  for  this — the  keen  eye,  the  swift,  fluttering 
movement  to  follow  the  insect,  the  quick,  sure  action 
of  the  neck  and  bill  to  seize  him — all  effective  with  no 
instruction  and  very  little  practice. 

Man  has  a  natural  hunger,  like  the  flycatcher,  and  a 
natural  mechanism  of  tasting,  chewing,  swallowing, 
and  digestion;  but  his  way  of  getting  the  food  varies 
widely  at  different  times  of  his  life,  is  not  the  same 
with  different  individuals,  and  often  changes  com- 
pletely from  one  generation  to  another.  The  great 
majority  of  us  gain  our  food,  after  we  have  left  the 
parental  nest,  through  what  we  call  a  job,  and  a  job 

21 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  any  activity  whatever  that  a  complex  and  shifting 
society  esteems  sufficiently  to  pay  us  for.  It  is  very 
likely,  nowadays,  to  last  only  part  of  our  lives  and  to 
be  something  our  ancestors  never  heard  of.  Thus 
whatever  is  most  distinctively  human,  our  adapta- 
bility, our  power  of  growth,  our  arts  and  sciences,  our 
social  institutions  and  progress,  is  bound  up  with  the 
indeterminate  character  of  human  heredity. 

Of  course  there  is  no  sharp  line,  in  this  matter  of 
teachability,  between  man  and  the  other  animals. 
The  activities  of  the  latter  are  not  wholly  predeter- 
mined, and  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  there  is  a  learning 
process  based  upon  plastic  heredity.  The  higher 
animals — horses,  dogs,  elephants,  for  example — are 
notably  teachable,  and  may  even  participate  in  the 
changes  of  human  society,  as  when  dogs  learn  to  draw 
carts,  trail  fugitives,  guide  the  lost,  or  perform  in  a 
circus.  And,  on  the  other  side,  those  activities  of  man 
which  do  not  require  much  adaptation,  such  as  the 
breathing,  sucking,  and  crying  of  infants,  and  even 
walking  (which  is  learned  without  instruction  when  the 
legs  become  strong  enough),  are  provided  for  by 
definite  heredity. 

The  question  of  the  place  of  instinct  in  human  life 
may  well  be  considered  here,  since  it  involves  not  only 
the  relation  between  human  and  animal  heredity,  but 
especially  that  distinction  between  fixed  and  plastic 
reactions  to  the  environment  that  we  have  just  dis- 
cussed. 

There  is  much  disagreement  upon  the  definition  of 
22 


INTRODUCTION 

instinct,  some  confining  it  to  definite  modes  of  heredi- 
tary behavior,  like  the  squirrel's  burying  a  nut;  others 
giving  it  a  much  wider  and  vaguer  meaning.  To  in- 
quire how  this  disagreement  arose  will  throw  light  upon 
the  whole  matter. 

Animals,  as  we  have  seen,  have  definite  and  effec- 
tive modes  of  acting  which  they  do  not  have  to  learn, 
and  it  was  these  that  first  attracted  attention,  by  their 
contrast  to  human  behavior,  and  were  called  instinct, 
as  opposed  to  the  more  rational  or  acquired  activities 
of  man.     Darwin  says  in  his  Origin  of  Species: 

"I  will  not  attempt  any  definition  of  instinct  .  .  .  but 
every  one  understands  what  is  meant  when  it  is  said  that 
instinct  impels  the  cuckoo  to  migrate  and  to  lay  her  eggs  in 
other  birds'  nests.  An  action,  which  we  ourselves  require 
experience  to  enable  us  to  perform,  when  performed  by  an 
animal,  more  especially  by  a  very  young  one,  without  experi- 
ence, and  when  performed  by  many  individuals  in  the  same 
way,  without  their  knowing  for  what  purpose  it  is  per- 
formed, is  usually  said  to  be  instinctive.  But  I  could  show 
that  none  of  these  characters  are  universal."  * 

Men  have  few  instinctive  actions,  in  this  original 
sense  of  the  word.  But  when  investigators  began  to 
study  our  behavior  from  the  evolutionary  point  of 
view,  they  saw  that  if  not  instinctive  in  the  strict  sense 
it  had  yet  grown  out  of  instinctive  behavior,  was  his- 
torically continuous  with  it,  and,  in  short,  that  there 
was  no  sharp  line  to  be  drawn,  in  this  matter,  between 
human  and  animal.  Moreover,  although  our  outward 
actions  had  ceased  to  be  determined  by  heredity,  it 
*  The  Origin  of  Species,  chap.  viii. 
23 


HUMAN    NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

seemed  that  we  still  had  inward  emotions  and  disposi- 
tions that  were  so  determined,  and  had  an  immense 
influence  on  our  conduct.  The  question,  then,  was, 
and  is,  whether  human  behavior,  guided  in  a  general 
way  by  these  hereditary  emotions  and  dispositions, 
shall  be  called  instinctive  or  not. 

Those  who  answer  yes,  would  say  that  a  man  is 
acting  instinctively  when  he  is  impelled  in  any  degree 
by  hunger,  fear,  rage,  or  sexual  attraction,  even  though 
his  mode  of  expressing  these  impulses  is  quite  new. 
Those  who  say  no,  would  mean  that  such  action  is 
not  instinctive  because  not  definitely  predetermined 
by  a  hereditary  mechanism.  The  transmission  of 
behavior  through  the  germ-plasm  is  their  test.  Hence 
the  disagreement  as  to  the  place  of  instinct  in  human 
life.  If  we  are  to  give  it  a  large  place  it  must  be  used 
in  the  former  sense,  that  is,  to  mean  an  inner  rather 
than  an  outer  process,  it  must  be  defined  in  terms  of 
motive  rather  than  of  specific  action. 

Perhaps  a  reasonable  middle  course  would  be  to 
avoid  the  word  "instinct"  as  applied  to  most  human 
behavior,  which  has  nothing  of  the  fixity  of  animal  in- 
stinct, and  speak  instead  of  "instinctive  emotion," 
since  the  emotional  side  of  our  activity  clearly  includes 
a  hereditary  element  which  seems  to  remain  much  the 
same  under  the  most  diverse  manifestations. 

If  we  do  this  we  shall  still  find  that  there  is  little 
agreement  as  to  just  what  instinctive  emotions  there 
are,  and  how  they  work.  The  reason  for  this  lack  of 
agreement  is  that  our  experience  bearing  upon  the 

24 


INTRODUCTION 

question,  although  real  and  vivid,  is  yet  elusive,  hard 
to  define  and  classify,  subject  to  various  interpreta- 
tions. Thus  the  passion  of  love  is  the  hackneyed  topic 
of  literature  and  conversation.  Most  of  us  have  un- 
dergone it,  have  observed  it  in  others,  and  are  willing 
to  impart  what  we  know  about  it;  yet  who  can  say 
precisely  what  the  essential  phenomena  are,  or  just 
what  is  inherited,  and  how  this  inheritance  is  awak- 
ened, modified,  developed  by  experience?  These  are 
obscure  questions,  and  perhaps  always  will  be.  There 
are  similar  questions  with  reference  to  fear,  anger, 
grief,  and  the  like.  The  student  will  find  informing 
books  that  aim  to  elucidate  these  phases  of  life,  analyz- 
ing and  describing  our  modes  of  feeling,  and  tracing 
their  probable  evolution  from  animal  instinct,  but 
these  works  differ  immensely  in  their  views,  and  none 
of  them  is  conclusive. 

It  is  fairly  clear  that  we  have  at  least  half  a  dozen 
well-marked  types  of  instinctive  emotional  disposition 
that  are  social  in  that  they  concern  directly  our  atti- 
tude toward  other  persons.  I  might  name,  as  perhaps 
the  plainest,  the  dispositions  to  anger,  to  fear,  to  ma- 
ternal love,  to  male  and  female  sexual  love,  and  to  the 
emotion  of  self-assertion  or  power.  We  may  accept 
these  as  instinctive, 

1.  Because  they  appear  to  be  universal  in  the  hu- 
man race,  as  shown  by  common  observation,  by  intro- 
spection, by  the  evidence  accumulated  in  literature, 
and  by  more  or  less  scientific  methods  of  study,  such 
as  those  used  by  psychoanalysts.    This  universality 

25 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

would  not  of  itself  prove  them  instinctive:  they  might 
be  due  to  universal  social  conditions.  It  adds  greatly, 
however,  to  the  cogency  of  other  reasons. 

2.  Because  they  are  associated  with  physical  reac- 
tions or  modes  of  expression  which  can  hardly  be  other 
than  instinctive,  many  of  them  being  practically  uni- 
versal among  the  human  race  and  some  of  them  found 
also  among  the  apes.  The  clenching  of  the  fists  and 
teeth  in  rage,  and  the  uncovering  of  the  teeth  as  if  to 
bite  are  an  example  of  what  I  mean.  Darwin  inves- 
tigated these  in  his  Expression  of  the  Emotions,  but, 
owing  to  his  belief  that  the  effects  of  habit  are  in- 
herited, he  did  not  discriminate  as  clearly  as  we  could 
wish  between  what  is  hereditary  and  what  is  learned 
from  others. 

3.  Because  they  correspond  to  and  motivate  cer- 
tain enduring  types  of  function  found  not  only  in  man 
but  in  other  animals;  because,  in  short,  they  are  so 
deeply  rooted  in  animal  evolution  that  it  would  be 
strange  if  they  were  not  instinctive.  Human  anger, 
for  example,  motivates  conflict  with  opposing  persons 
or  other  agents,  being  similar  in  function  to  the  anger, 
clearly  instinctive,  of  all  the  fighting  animals.  In  the 
same  way  fear  motivates  escape  from  danger,  with  us 
as  with  all  animals  who  have  dangers  to  escape  from, 
and  so  on.  These  instinctive  emotions  predetermine, 
not  specific  actions,  but,  in  a  measure,  the  energy  that 
flows  into  actions  having  a  certain  function  with  refer- 
ence to  our  environment.* 

*  Apparently  there  must  be,  along  with  the  hereditary  emo- 
tional disposition,  some  hereditary  nervous  mechanism  to  con- 
nect the  emotion  with  the  various  stimuli  that  awaken  it.     Some 

26 


INTRODUCTION 

Beyond  such  clearly  ascertainable  hereditary  dis- 
positions there  are  innumerable  others,  some  of  them, 
perhaps,  equally  clear,  but  most  of  them  elusive,  un- 
defined, and  disputable.  Moreover,  all  such  disposi- 
tions, including  those  mentioned,  are  rapidly  developed, 
transformed,  and  interwoven  by  social  experience,  giv- 
ing rise  to  a  multitude  of  complex  passions  and  senti- 
ments which  no  one  has  satisfactorily  elucidated.  In- 
deed, as  these  change  very  considerably  with  changes  in 
the  social  life  that  moulds  them,  it  is  impossible  that 
thej^  should  be  definitely  and  finally  described.  Each 
age  and  country  has  its  own  more  or  less  peculiar  modes 
of  feeling,  as  it  has  of  thinking.  There  is  no  finality  in 
this  field.* 

Although  instinctive  emotion  probably  enters  into 
everything  we  do,  it  enters  in  such  a  way  that  we  can 
rarely  or  never  explain  human  behavior  by  it  alone. 
In  human  life  it  is  not,  in  any  considerable  degree,  a 
motive  to  specific  behavior  at  all,  but  an  impulse 
whose  definite  expression  depends  upon  education  and 
social  situation.  It  does  not  act  except  through  a 
complex,  socially  determined  organism  of  thought  and 
sentiment. 

If,  for  example,  we  say  "War  is  due  to  an  instinct  of 
pugnacity,"  we  say  something  that  includes  so  little 

regard  this  as  a  difficulty,  but  if  so  it  is  one  for  the  psychologist 
to  solve.  That  generalized  types  of  function,  as  personal 
conflict,  do  awaken  specific  emotions,  as  anger,  and  are  also 
motivated  by  them,  is  a  matter  of  direct  observation. 

*  Professor  McDougall's  Social  Psychology,  which  appeared 
some  years  after  the  first  edition  of  this  book,  is  now  well  known 
as  a  standard  work  in  the  field  indicated. 

27 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  the  truth  and  ignores  so  much  that  it  is  practically 
false.  War  is  rooted  in  many  instinctive  tendencies, 
all  of  which  have  been  transformed  by  education,  tra- 
dition, and  organization,  so  that  to  study  its  sources 
is  to  study  the  whole  process  of  society.  This  calls, 
above  all  things,  for  detailed  historical  and  sociological 
analysis:  there  could  hardly  be  anything  more  inimi- 
cal to  real  knowledge  or  rational  conduct  regarding  it 
than  to  ascribe  it  to  pugnacity  and  let  the  question  go 
at  that. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  employment  of  a 
supposed  gregarious  instinct,  or  "instinct  of  the  herd," 
to  explain  a  multiplicity  of  phenomena,  including 
mob-excitement,  dread  of  isolation,  conformity  to  fads 
and  fashions,  subservience  to  leaders  and  control  by 
propaganda;  which  require,  like  war,  a  detailed  study 
of  social  antecedents.  This  is,  as  Professor  Findlay 
remarks,*  "an  easy,  dogmatic  way  of  explaining 
phenomena  whose  causes  and  effects  are  far  more 
complicated  than  these  authors  would  admit."  In- 
deed I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  any  such  evidence 
of  the  existence  of  a  gregarious  instinct  as  there  is  of 
an  instinct  of  fear  or  anger;  and  many  think  the 
phenomena  which  it  is  used  to  explain  may  be  ac- 
counted for  by  sympathy  and  suggestion,  without  call- 
ing in  a  special  instinct.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
postulate  of  an  individualistic  psychology  in  search  of 
some  special  motive  to  explain  collective  behavior.  If 
you  regard  human  nature  as  primarily  social  you  need 
no  such  special  motive,  f 

*  An  Introduction  to  Sociology,  p.  72. 

t  The  notion  that  collective  behavior  is  to  be  attributed  to 

28 


INTRODUCTION 

There  is,  indeed,  a  wide-spread  disposition  among 
psychologists,  psychoanalysts,  biologists,  economists, 
writers  on  education,  and  others  who  are  interested  in 
instinct  but  would  gladly  avoid  history  or  sociology, 
to  short-circuit  their  current  of  causation,  leading  it 
directly  from  instinct  to  social  behavior,  without  fol- 
lowing it  into  those  intricate  convolutions  of  social 
process  through  which,  in  the  real  world,  it  actually 
flows  and  by  which  it  is  transformed.  This  is  an  in- 
stance of  that  common  fallacy,  particularism,  which 
consists  in  attending  to  only  one  factor  in  a  complex 
whole.  Social  questions,  because  of  the  many  fac- 
tors entering  into  them,  offer  peculiar  temptations  to 
this  fallacy,  against  which  we  cannot  be  too  much  on 
our  guard. 

How  are  we  to  think  of  reason  in  relation  to  instinct  ? 
This  depends  upon  our  view  as  to  that  question,  al- 
ready discussed,  whether  instinct  means  only  fixed 
modes  of  behavior  or  whether  it  may  include  also 
instinctive  emotion  that  expresses  itself  in  plastic 
behavior.  If  we  confine  it  to  the  former,  then  instinct 
and  reason  exclude  each  other,  because  it  is  the  nature 
of  reason  to  adapt  conduct  to  varying  conditions;  but 
if  we  admit  the  latter,  then  reason  and  instinct  may 
work  together.  Fixed  instincts  call  for  no  general 
control :  life  presses  a  button  and  the  hereditary  mech- 
anism does  the  rest.  But  teachable  instincts  imply 
a  teacher.    They  must  be  guided,  developed,  co-ordi- 

an  "instinct  of  the  herd"  seems  to  owe  its  vogue  in  great  part 
to  Nietzsche,  who  made  much  use  of  it,  in  a  contemptuous  sense, 
to  animate  his  anti-democratic  philosophy. 

29 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nated,  organized,  so  that  they  may  work  effectually; 
and  this  is  the  part  of  reason.  Reason,  in  one  aspect, 
is  team-work  in  the  mind;  it  is  the  mental  organization 
required  by  the  various  and  changing  life  of  man.  It 
takes  the  crude  energy  of  the  instinctive  dispositions, 
as  an  officer  takes  his  raw  recruits,  instructing  and 
training  them  until  they  can  work  together  for  any  end 
he  may  propose,  and  in  any  manner  that  the  situation 
demands.  If  a  man  wants  a  wife  it  teaches  him  how, 
in  the  existing  state  of  things,  he  may  be  able  to  woo 
and  win  her,  and  how  support  her  when  won,  guid- 
ing him  through  a  complicated  course  of  behavior 
adapted  to  the  present  and  yet  impelled  in  part  by 
hereditary  emotion. 

Reason,  in  this  view,  does  not  supplant  instinct, 
any  more  than  the  captain  supplants  the  private  sol- 
diers; it  is  a  principle  of  higher  organization,  con- 
trolling and  transforming  instinctive  energies.  Indeed, 
reason  is  itself  an  instinctive  disposition,  in  a  large  use 
of  the  term,  a  disposition  to  compare,  combine,  and 
organize  the  activities  of  the  mind.  Animals  have  it 
in  some  measure  and  it  is  unique  in  man  only  by  the 
degree  of  its  development:  it  might  be  compared  to  a 
common  soldier  emerging  from  the  ranks,  taking  the 
lead  by  virtue  of  peculiar  ability  and  becoming  in 
time  the  commanding  officer. 

And  human  history,  in  distinction  from  animal 
history,  is  a  natural  outcome  of  those  traits  of  human 
psychology  that  we  have  discussed.  It  is  a  process 
possible   only  to  a  species  endowed   with  teachable 

30 


INTRODUCTION 

instinctive  dispositions,  organized,  partly  by  reason, 
into  a  plastic  and  growing  social  whole.  This  whole, 
responsive  to  the  outer  world  in  a  thousand  ways,  and 
containing  also  diverse  and  potent  energies  within  it- 
self, is  ever  putting  forth  new  forms  of  life,  which  we 
describe  as  progress  or  decadence  according  as  we  think 
them  better  or  worse  than  the  old.  These  changes  do 
not  require  any  alteration  in  our  hereditary  powers. 
The  hereditary  basis,  the  instinctive  but  teachable 
capacities,  are  relatively  constant,  and,  so  far  as  these 
are  concerned,  there  is  little  or  no  reason  to  think  that 
the  Teutonic  stocks  from  which  most  of  us  are  sprung 
are  appreciably  different  now  from  what  they  were 
when  Caesar  met  and  fought  and  described  them.  If 
we  could  substitute  a  thousand  babies  from  that  time 
for  those  in  our  own  cradles,  it  would  probably  make 
no  perceptible  difference.  They  would  grow  up  in 
our  ways,  driving  automobiles  instead  of  war  chariots, 
reading  the  newspapers,  and,  in  general,  playing  the 
human  game  as  it  is  played  to-day  quite  like  the  rest 
of  us. 

And,  finally,  just  what  do  we  mean  by  Human 
Nature?  The  phrase  is  used  vaguely,  but  there  are 
at  least  three  meanings  that  can  be  distinguished  with 
some  precision.  And  as  we  distinguish  them  we  may 
be  able,  at  the  same  time,  to  answer  the  perennial 
question,  Does  Human  Nature  change? 

It  may  mean,  first,  the  strictly  hereditary  nature  of 
man,  borne  by  the  germ-plasm,  the  formless  impulses 
and  capacities  that  we  infer  to  exist  at  birth,  but  of 

31 


4G0SJ7WSCARDJa) 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

which  we  have  little  definite  knowledge  because  they 
do  not  manifest  themselves  except  as  a  factor  in  social 
development.  This  nature  appears  to  change  very 
slowly,  and  we  have  no  reason  to  think  we  are  very 
much  different  at  birth  from  our  ancestors  of,  say,  a 
thousand  years  ago.* 

It  may  mean,  second,  a  social  nature  developed  in 
man  by  simple  forms  of  intimate  association  or  "pri- 
mary groups,"  especially  the  family  and  neighborhood, 
which  are  found  everywhere  and  everywhere  work 
upon  the  individual  in  somewhat  the  same  way. 
This  nature  consists  chiefly  of  certain  primary  social 
sentiments  and  attitudes,  such  as  consciousness  of  one's 
self  in  relation  to  others,  love  of  approbation,  resent- 
ment of  censure,  emulation,  and  a  sense  of  social  right 
and  wrong  formed  by  the  standards  of  a  group.  This 
seems  to  me  to  correspond  very  closely  to  what  is 
meant  by  "human  nature"  in  ordinary  speech.  We 
mean  something  much  more  definite  than  hereditary 
disposition,  which  most  of  us  know  nothing  about, 
and  yet  something  fundamental  and  wide-spread  if  not 
universal  in  the  life  of  man,  found  in  ancient  history 
and  in  the  accounts  of  remote  nations,  as  well  as  now 
and  here.  Thus,  when  we  read  that  Joseph's  brethren 
hated  him  and  could  not  speak  peaceably  to  him  be- 
cause they  saw  that  their  father  loved  him  more  than 
all  the  rest;  we  say,  "Of  course,  that  is  human  nature." 
This  social  nature  is  much  more  alterable  than  heredity, 
and  if  it  is  "pretty  much  the  same  the  world  over," 

*  Professor  E.  L.  Thorndike  is  the  author  of  an  important  work 
on  The  Original  Nature  of  Man. 

32 


INTRODUCTION 

as  we  commonly  say,  this  is  because  the  intimate  groups 
in  which  it  is  formed  are  somewhat  similar.  If  these 
are  essentially  changed,  human  nature  will  change  with 
them. 

There  is  a  third  sense  of  the  phrase  which  is  not  un- 
usual, especially  in  discussions  which  turn  upon  the 
merits  or  demerits  of  human  nature.  This  is  not  easy 
to  define,  but  differs  from  the  preceding  in  identifying 
it  with  somewhat  specific  types  of  behavior,  such  as 
pecuniary  selfishness  or  generosity,  belligerency  or 
peacefulness,  efficiency  or  inefficiency,  conservatism 
or  radicalism,  and  the  like.  In  other  words,  it  departs 
from  the  generality  of  the  idea  and  brings  in  elements 
that  come  from  particular  situations  and  institutions. 
Human  nature,  in  any  such  sense  as  this,  is  in  the  high- 
est degree  changeful,  because  the  behavior  to  which  it 
gives  rise  varies,  morally  and  in  every  other  way,  with 
the  influences  that  act  upon  it.  It  may  be  selfish, 
inefficient,  quarrelsome,  conservative  now,  and  a  few 
years  hence  or  in  another  situation  generous,  peaceful, 
efficient,  and  progressive;  all  turns  upon  how  it  is 
evoked  and  organized.  Perhaps  the  commonest  fal- 
lacy we  meet  in  this  connection  is  that  which  assumes 
that  human  nature  does  not  change,  points  out  respects 
in  which  it  has  worked  deplorably,  and  concludes  that 
it  will  always  work  so.  An  unchanging  human  na- 
ture, it  is  said,  has  given  us  wars  and  economic  greed; 
it  always  will.  On  the  contrary,  since  these  things 
disappear  or  are  controlled  under  certain  conditions 
we  may  conclude  that  human  nature,  in  this  sense,  is 
subject  to  change. 

33 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

But,  in  the  more  general  sense,  it  is  a  nature  whose 
primary  trait  is  teachability,  and  so  does  not  need  to 
change  in  order  to  be  an  inexhaustible  source  of  chang- 
ing conduct  and  institutions.  We  can  make  it  work  in 
almost  any  way,  if  we  understand  it,  as  a  clever  me- 
chanic can  mould  to  his  will  the  universal  laws  of  mass 
and  motion. 


34 


r 


CHAPTER  I 
SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

AN  ORGANIC  RELATION — THEY  ARE  ASPECTS  OP  THE  SAME  THING— 
THE  FALLACY  OF  SETTING  THEM  IN  OPPOSITION — VARIOUS 
FORMS  OF  THIS  FALLACY — FAMILIAR  QUESTIONS  AND  HOW 
THEY  MAY  BE   ANSWERED 

"Society  and  the  Individual"  is  really  the  subject 
of  this  whole  book,  and  not  merely  of  Chapter  I.  It 
is  my  general  aim  to  set  forth,  from  various  points 
of  view,  what  the  individual  is,  considered  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  social  whole;  while  the  special  purpose  of  this 
chapter  is  only  to  offer  a  preliminary  statement  of 
the  matter,  as  I  conceive  it,  afterward  to  be  unfolded 
at  some  length  and  variously  illustrated. 

If  we  accept  the  evolutionary  point  of  view  we  are 
led  to  see  the  relation  between  society  and  the  indi- 
vidual as  an  organic  relation.  That  is,  we  see  that 
the  individual  is  not  separable  from  the  human  whole, 
but  a  living  member  of  it,  deriving  his  life  from  the 
whole  through  social  and  hereditary  transmission  as 
truly  as  if  men  were  literally  one  body.  He  cannot 
cut  himself  off;  the  strands  of  heredity  and  education 
are  woven  into  all  his  being.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  social  whole  is  in  some  degree  dependent  upon 
each  individual,  because  each  contributes  something 
to  the  common  life  that  no  one  else  can  contribute./ 

35  ^ 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Thus  we  have,  in  a  broad  sense  of  the  word,  an  "or- 
ganism" or  living  whole  made  up  of  differentiated 
members,  each  of  which  has  a  special  function. 

This  is  true  of  society  in  that  large  sense  which  em- 
braces all  humanity,  and  also  of  any  specific  social 
group.  A  university,  for  example,  is  an  organic  whole, 
made  up  of  students,  teachers,  officials,  and  others. 
Every  member  is  more  or  less  dependent  upon  every 
other,  because  all  contribute  to  the  common  life.  And 
note  that  it  is  precisely  his  individuality,  his  functional 
difference  from  the  rest,  that  gives  each  member  his  pe- 
culiar importance.  The  professor  of  Paleontology  has 
a  part  that  no  one  else  can  play;  and  so,  less  obviously, 
perhaps,  has  every  teacher  and  student.  The  organic 
view  stresses  both  the  unity  of  the  whole  and  the 
peculiar  value  of  the  individual,  explaining  each  by  the 
other.  What  is  a  football  team  without  a  quarter- 
back? Almost  as  useless  as  a  quarter-back  without  a 
team.  A  well-developed  individual  can  exist  only  in 
and  through  a  well-developed  whole,  and  vice  versa. 

This  seems  a  simple  idea,  and  so  it  is,  but  it  is  so 
opposed  to  some  of  our  most  cherished  habits  of 
thought  that  we  may  well  take  time  to  look  at  it  from 
various  points  of  view. 

/  A  separate  individual  is  an  abstraction  unknown  to 
>JL-  experience,  and  so  likewise  is  society  when  regarded 
as  something  apart  from  individuals.  (  The  real  thing 
is  Human  Life,  which  may  be  considered  either  in  an 
individual  aspect  or  in  a  social,  that  is  to  say  a  general, 
aspect;  but  is  always,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  both  indi- 

36 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

vidual  and  general.  In  other  words,  "society"  and 
"individuals"  do  not  denote  separable  phenomena, 
but  are  simply  collective  and  distributive  aspects  of 
the  same  thing,  the  relation  between  them  being  like 
that  between  other  expressions  one  of  which  denotes 
a  group  as  a  whole  and  the  other  the  members  of  the 
group,  such  as  the  army  and  the  soldiers,  the  class  and 
the  students,  and  so  on.  This  holds  true  of  any  social 
aggregate,  great  or  small;  of  a  family,  a  city,  a  nation, 
a  race;  of  mankind  as  a  whole:  no  matter  how  extensive, 
complex,  or  enduring  a  group  may  be,  no  good  reason 
can  be  given  for  regarding  it  as  essentially  different  in 
this  respect  from  the  smallest,  simplest,  or  most 
transient. 

So  far,  then,  as  there  is  any  difference  between  the 
two,  it  is  rather  in  our  point  of  view  than  in  the  ob- 
ject we  are  looking  at:  when  we  speak  of  society,  or 
use  any  other  collective  term,  we  fix  our  minds  upon 
some  general  view  of  the  people  concerned,  while  when 
we  speak  of  individuals  we  disregard  the  general  as- 
pect and  think  of  them  as  if  they  were  separate.  Thus 
"the  Cabinet"  may  consist  of  President  Lincoln, 
Secretary  Stanton,  Secretary  Seward,  and  so  on;  but 
when  I  say  "the  Cabinet"  I  do  not  suggest  the  same 
idea  as  when  I  enumerate  these  gentlemen  separately. 
Society,  or  any  complex  group,  may,  to  ordinary  ob- 
servation, be  a  very  different  thing  from  all  of  its 
members  viewed  one  by  one — as  a  man  who  beheld 
General  Grant's  army  from  Missionary  Ridge  would 
have  seen  something  other  than  he  would  by  approach- 
ing every  soldier  in  it.     In  the  same  way  a  picture  is 

37 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

made  up  of  so  many  square  inches  of  painted  canvas; 
but  if  you  should  look  at  these  one  at  a  time,  covering 
the  others,  until  you  had  seen  them  all,  you  would 
still  not  have  seen  the  picture.  There  may,  in  all  such 
cases,  be  a  system  or  organization  in  the  whole  that 
is  not  apparent  in  the  parts.  In  this  sense,  and  in 
no  other,  is  there  a  difference  between  society  and  the 
individuals  of  which  it  is  composed;  a  difference  not 
residing  in  the  facts  themselves  but  existing  to  the 
observer  on  account  of  the  limits  of  his  perception. 
A  complete  view  of  society  would  also  be  a  complete 
view  of  all  the  individuals,  and  vice  versa ;  there  would 
be  no  difference  between  them. 

And  just  as  there  is  no  society  or  group  that  is  not 
a  collective  view  of  persons,  so  there  is  no  individual 
who  may  not  be  regarded  as  a  particular  view  of  social 
groupsL^He  has  no  separate  existence;  through  both 
the  hereditary  and  the  social  factors  in  his  life  a  man 
is  bound  into  the  whole  of  which  he  is  a  member,  and 
to  consider  him  apart  from  it  is  quite  as  artificial  as 
to  consider  society  apart  from  individuals. 

If  this  is  true  there  is,  of  course,  a  fallacy  in  that  not 
uncommon  manner  of  speaking  which  sets  the  social 
and  the  individual  over  against  each  other  as  separate 
and  antagonistic.  The  word  "social"  appears  to  be 
used  in  at  least  three  fairly  distinct  senses,  but  in 
none  of  these  does  it  mean  something  that  can  properly 
be  regarded  as  opposite  to  individual  or  personal. 

In  its  largest  sense  it  denotes  that  which  pertains 
to  the  collective  aspect  of  humanity,  to  society  in  its 

38 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

widest  and  vaguest  meaning.  In  this  sense  the  indi- 
vidual and  all  his  attributes  are  social,  since  they  are 
all  connected  with  the  general  life  in  one  way  or  an- 
other, and  are  part  of  a  collective  development. 

Again,  social  may  mean  what  pertains  to  immediate 
intercourse,  to  the  life  of  conversation  and  face-to-face 
sympathy — sociable,  in  short.  This  is  something  quite 
different,  but  no  more  antithetical  to  individual  than 
the  other;  it  is  in  these  relations  that  individuality 
most  obviously  exists  and  expresses  itself. 

In  a  third  sense  the  word  means  conducive  to  the 
collective  welfare,  and  thus  becomes  nearly  equivalent 
to  moral,  as  when  we  say  that  crime  or  sensuality  is 
unsocial  or  anti-social;  but  here  again  it  cannot  prop- 
erly be  made  the  antithesis  of  individual — since  wrong 
is  surely  no  more  individual  than  right — but  must  be 
contrasted  with  immoral,  brutal,  selfish,  or  some  other 
word  with  an  ethical  implication. 

There  are  a  number  of  expressions  which  are  closely 
associated  in  common  usage  with  this  objectionable 
antithesis;  such  words,  for  instance,  as  individualism, 
socialism,  particularism,  collectivism.*  These  appear 
to  be  used  with  a  good  deal  of  vagueness,  so  that  it  is 
always  in  order  to  require  that  any  one  who  employs 
them  shall  make  it  plain  in  what  sense  they  are  to  be 
taken.  I  wish  to  make  no  captious  objections  to  par- 
ticular forms  of  expression,  and  so  far  as  these  can  be 
shown  to  have  meanings  that  express  the  facts  of  life 
I  have  nothing  to  say  against  them.     Of  the  current 

*  Also  free-will,  determinism,  egoism,  and  altruism,  which  in- 
volve, in  my  opinion,  a  kindred  misconception. 

39 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

use  of  individualism  and  socialism  in  antithesis  to 
each  other,  about  the  same  may  be  said  as  of  the  words 
without  the  ism.  I  do  not  see  that  life  presents  two 
distinct  and  opposing  tendencies  that  can  properly  be 
called  individualism  and  socialism,  any  more  than  that 
there  are  two  distinct  and  opposing  entities,  society 
and  the  individual,  to  embody  these  tendencies.  The 
phenomena  usually  called  individualistic  are  always 
socialistic  in  the  sense  that  they  are  expressive  of  ten- 
dencies growing  out  of  the  general  life,  and,  contrari- 
wise, the  so-called  socialistic  phenomena  have  always 
an  obvious  individual  aspect.  These  and  similar  terms 
may  be  used,  conveniently  enough,  to  describe  theories 
or  programmes  of  the  day,  but  whether  they  are  suita- 
ble for  purposes  of  careful  study  appears  somewhat 
doubtful.  If  used,  they  ought,  it  seems  to  me,  to 
receive  more  adequate  definition  than  they  have  at 
present. 

For  example,  all  the  principal  epochs  of  European 
history  might  be,  and  most  of  them  are,  spoken  of  as 
individualistic  on  one  ground  or  another,  and  without 
departing  from  current  usage  of  the  word.  The  de- 
caying Roman  Empire  was  individualistic  if  a  decline 
of  public  spirit  and  an  every-man-for-himself  feeling 
and  practice  constitute  individualism.  So  also  was 
the  following  period  of  political  confusion.  The  feudal 
system  is  often  regarded  as  individualistic,  because  of 
the  relative  independence  and  isolation  of  small  politi- 
cal units — quite  a  different  use  of  the  word  from  the 
preceding — and  after  this  come  the  Revival  of  Learn- 
ing, the  Renaissance,  and  the  Reformation,  which  are 
all  commonly  spoken  of,  on  still  other  grounds,  as 

40 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

assertions  of  individualism.  Then  we  reach  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries,  sceptical,  transitional, 
and,  again,  individualistic;  and  so  to  our  own  time, 
which  many  hold  to  be  the  most  individualistic  of  all. 
One  feels  like  asking  whether  a  word  which  means  so 
many  things  as  this  means  anything  whatever. 

There  is  always  some  confusion  of  terms  in  speaking 
of  opposition  between  an  individual  and  society  in 
general,  even  when  the  writer's  meaning  is  obvious 
enough:  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  either  that 
one  individual  is  opposing  many,  or  that  one  part  of 
society  is  opposing  other  parts;  and  thus  avoid  con- 
fusing the  two  aspects  of  life  in  the  same  expression. 
When  Emerson  says  that  society  is  in  a  conspiracy 
against  the  independence  of  each  of  its  members,  we 
are  to  understand  that  any  peculiar  tendency  repre- 
sented by  one  person  finds  itself  more  or  less  at  vari- 
ance with  the  general  current  of  tendencies  organized 
in  other  persons.     It  is  no  more  individual,  nor  any 
less  social,  in  a  large  sense,   than  other   tendencies 
represented   by  more   persons.     A   thousand   persons 
are  just  as  truly  individuals  as  one,  and  the  man  who 
seems  to  stand  alone  draws  his  being  from  the  general 
stream  of  life  just  as  truly  and  inevitably  as  if  he  were 
one  of  a  thousand.  '  Innovation  is  just  as  social  as  ~~f 
conformity,  genius  as  mediocrity.     These  distinctions   [      *""' 
are  not  between  what  is  individual  and  what  is  social,   1 
but  between  what  is  usual  or  established  and  what  is    1 
exceptional  or  novel.  J  In  other  words,  wherever  you    I 
find  life  as  society 'there  you  will  find  life  as  individu- 
ality, and  vice  versa. 

I  think,  then,  that  the  antithesis,  society  versus  the 
41 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

individual,  is  false  and  hollow  whenever  used  as  a 
general  or  philosophical  statement  of  human  relations. 
Whatever  idea  may  be  in  the  minds  of  those  who  set 
these  words  and  their  derivatives  over  against  each 
other,  the  notion  conveyed  is  that  of  two  separable 
entities  or  forces;  and  certainly  such  a  notion  is  untrue 
to.  fact. 

Most  people  not  only  think  of  individuals  and  so- 
ciety as  more  or  less  separate  and  antithetical,  but 
they  look  upon  the  former  as  antecedent  to  the  latter. 
That  persons  make  society  would  be  generally  admitted 
as  a  matter  of  course;  but  that  society  makes  persons 
would  strike  many  as  a  startling  notion,  though  I 
know  of  no  good  reason  for  looking  upon  the  distribu- 
tive aspect  of  life  as  more  primary  or  causative  than 
the  collective  aspect.  The  reason  for  the  common 
impression  appears  to  be  that  we  think  most  naturally 
and  easily  of  the  individual  phase  of  life,  simply  be- 
cause it  is  a  tangible  one,  the  phase  under  which  men 
appear  to  the  senses,  while  the  actuality  of  groups,  of 
nations,  of  mankind  at  large,  is  realized  only  by  the 
active  and  instructed  imagination.  We  ordinarily  re- 
gard society,  so  far  as  we  conceive  it  at  all,  in  a  vaguely 
material  aspect,  as  an  aggregate  of  physical  bodies, 
not  as  the  vital  whole  which  it  is;  and  so,  of  course,  we 
do  not  see  that  it  may  be  as  original  or  causative  as 
anything  else.  Indeed,  many  look  upon  "society" 
and  other  general  terms  as  somewhat  mystical,  and 
are  inclined  to  doubt  whether  there  is  any  reality  back 
of  them. 

This  naive  individualism  of  thought — which,  how- 
42 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

ever,  does  not  truly  see  the  individual  any  more  than 
it  does  society — is  reinforced  by  traditions  in  which  all 
of  us  are  brought  up,  and  is  so  hard  to  shake  off  that 
it  may  be  worth  while  to  point  out  a  little  more  defi- 
nitely some  of  the  prevalent  ways  of  conceiving  life 
which  are  permeated  by  it,  and  which  any  one  who 
agrees  with  what  has  just  been  said  may  regard  as 
fallacious.  My  purpose  in  doing  this  is  only  to  make 
clearer  the  standpoint  from  which  succeeding  chapters 
are  written,  and  I  do  not  propose  any  thorough  dis- 
cussion of  the  views  mentioned. 

First,  then,  we  have  mere  individualism.  In  this 
the  distributive  aspect  is  almost  exclusively  regarded, 
collective  phases  being  looked  upon  as  quite  secondary 
and  incidental.  Each  person  is  held  to  be  a  separate 
agent,  and  all  social  phenomena  are  thought  of  as 
originating  in  the  action  of  such  agents.  The  indi- 
vidual is  the  source,  the  independent,  the  only  human 
source,  of  events.  Although  this  way  of  looking  at 
things  has  been  much  discredited  by  the  evolutionary 
science  and  philosophy  of  recent  years,  it  is  by  no  means 
abandoned,  even  in  theory,  and  practically  it  enters 
as  a  premise,  in  one  shape  or  another,  into  most  of  the 
current  thought  of  the  day.  It  springs  naturally  from 
the  established  way  of  thinking,  congenial,  as  I  have 
remarked,  to  the  ordinary  material  view  of  things 
and  corroborated  by  theological  and  other  tradi- 
tions. 

Next  is  double  causation,  or  a  partition  of  power 
between   society   and   the   individual,   thought   of   as 

43 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

separate  causes.  This  notion,  in  one  shape  or  another, 
is  the  one  ordinarily  met  with  in  social  and  ethical 
discussion.  It  is  no  advance,  philosophically,  upon 
the  preceding.  There  is  the  same  premise  of  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  separate,  unrelated  agent;  but  over  against 
him  is  set  a  vaguely  conceived  general  or  collective 
interest  and  force.  It  seems  that  people  are  so  ac- 
customed to  thinking  of  themselves  as  uncaused  causes, 
special  creators  on  a  small  scale,  that  when  the  exist- 
ence of  general  phenomena  is  forced  upon  their  notice 
they  are  likely  to  regard  these  as  something  addi- 
tional, separate,  and  more  or  less  antithetical.  Our 
two  forces  contend  with  varying  fortunes,  the  thinker 
sometimes  sympathizing  with  one,  sometimes  with 
the  other,  and  being  an  individualist  or  a  socialist 
accordingly.  The  doctrines  usually  understood  in 
connection  with  these  terms  differ,  as  regards  their 
conception  of  the  nature  of  life,  only  in  taking  opposite 
sides  of  the  same  questionable  antithesis.  The  so- 
cialist holds  it  desirable  that  the  general  or  collective 
force  should  win;  the  individualist  has  a  contrary 
opinion.  Neither  offers  any  change  of  ground,  any 
reconciling  and  renewing  breadth  of  view.  So  far  as 
breadth  of  view  is  concerned  a  man  might  quite  as 
well  be  an  individualist  as  a  socialist  or  collectivism 
the  two  being  identical  in  philosophy  though  antago- 
nistic in  programme.  If  one  is  inclined  to  neither 
party  he  may  take  refuge  in  the  expectation  that  the 
controversy,  resting,  as  he  may  hold  that  it  does,  on  a 
false  conception  of  life,  will  presently  take  its  proper 
place  among  the  forgotten  debris  of  speculation. 

44 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

Thirdly  we  have  'primitive  individualism.  This  ex- 
pression has  been  used  to  describe  the  view  that 
sociality  follows  individuality  in  time,  is  a  later  and 
additional  product  of  development.  This  view  is  a 
variety  of  the  preceding,  and  is,  perhaps,  formed  by 
a  mingling  of  individualistic  preconceptions  with  a 
,'  somewhat  crude  evolutionary  philosophy.  Individu- 
\     ality  is  usually  conceived  as  lower  in  moral  rank  as 

\well  as  precedent  in  time.     Man  was  a  mere  indi- 
vidual, mankind  a  mere  aggregation  of  such,  but  he 
had  gradually  become  socialized,  he  is  progressively 

I   merging  into  a  social  whole.     Morally  speaking,  the 

^-individual  is  the  bad,  the  social  the  good,  and  we  must 
push  on  the  work  of  putting  down  the  former  and 
bringing  in  the  latter. 

Of  course  the  view  which  I  regard  as  sound,  is  that 

I  individuality  is  neither  prior  in  time  nor  lower  in  moral 
rank  than  sociality;  but  that  the  two  have  always  ex- 
isted side  by  side  as  complementary  aspects  of  the 
same  thing,  and  that  the  line  of  progress  is  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  type  of  both,  not  from  the  one  to  the 
other\  If_the  word  social  is  applied  only  to  the  higher 
forms  of  mental  life  it  should,  as  aheady__sugggslejd, 
be  opposed  not  to  individual,  but  to  animal,  sensual, 
or  jaome  otherword  implying-  mental  or  moral  infurtor^ 
ity.  If  we  go  back  to  a  time  when  the  state  of  our 
remote  ancestors  was  such  that  we  are  not  willing  to 
call  it  social,  then  it  must  have  been  equally  unde- 
serving to  be  described  as  individual  or  personal;  that 
is  to  say,  they  must  have  been  just  as  inferior  to  us 
when  viewed  separately  as  when  viewed  collectively. 

45 


B 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

To  question  this  is  to  question  the  vital  unity  of 
human  life. 

The  life  of  the  human  species,  like  that  of  other 
species,  must  always  have  been  both  general  and  par- 
ticular, must  always  have  had  its  collective  and  dis- 
tributive aspects.  The  plane  of  this  life  has  gradually 
risen,  involving,  of  course,  both  the  aspects  mentioned. 
Now,  as  ever,  they  develop  as  one,  and  may  be  ob- 
served united  in  the  highest  activities  of  the  highest 
minds.  Shakespeare,  for  instance,  is  in  one  point  of 
view  a  unique  and  transcendent  individual;  in  another 
he  is  a  splendid  expression  of  the  general  life  of  man- 
kind: the  difference  is  not  in  him  but  in  the  way  we 
choose  to  look  at  him. 

Finally,  there  is  the  social  faculty  view.  This  ex- 
pression might  be  used  to  indicate  those  conceptions 
which  regard  the  social  as  including  only  a  part,  often 
a  rather  definite  part,  of  the  individual.  Human  na- 
ture is  thus  divided  into  individualistic  or  non-social 
tendencies  or  faculties,  and  those  that  are  social. 
Thus,  certain  emotions,  as  love,  are  social;  others,  as 
fear  or  anger,  are  unsocial  or  individualistic.  Some 
writers  have  even  treated  the  intelligence  as  an  indi- 
vidualistic faculty,  and  have  found  sociality  only  in 
some  sorts  of  emotion  or  sentiment. 

This  idea  of  instincts  or  faculties  that  are  peculiarly 
social  is  well  enough  if  we  use  this  word  in  the  sense 
of  pertaining  to  conversation  or  immediate  fellow 
feeling.  Affection  is  certainly  more  social  in  this  sense 
than  fear.  But  if  it  is  meant  that  these  instincts  or 
faculties  are  in  themselves  morally  higher  than  others, 

46 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

or  that  they  alone  pertain  to  the  collective  life,  the 
view  is,  I  think,  very  questionable.  At  any  rate  the 
opinion  I  hold,  and  expect  to  explain  more  fully  in  the 
further  course  of  this  book,  is  that  man's  psychical 
outfit  is  not  divisible  into  the  social  and  thp  rmn_-sr>m'nl ; 
but  that  he~is~~all  social  in  a  large  sense,  is  all  a  j3ar£_.oJ^ 
tj^ooimnon~Tiuniaii  Hft^  and  thafhis  Social  or  moral 
progress  consists  less  in  the  aggrandizement  of  par- 
ticular faculties  or  instincts  and  the  suppression  of 
others,  than  in  the  discipline  of  all  with  reference  to  a 
progressive  organization  of  life  which  we  know  in 
thought  as  conscience. 

Some  instincts  or  tendencies  may  grow  in  relative 
importance,  may  have  an  increasing  function,  while 
the  opposite  may  be  true  of  others.  Such  relative 
growth  and  diminution  of  parts  seems  to  be  a  general 
feature  of  evolution,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  be  absent  from  our  mental  development.  But 
here  as  well  as  elsewhere  most  parts,  if  not  all,  are  or 
have  been  functional  with  reference  to  a  life  collective 
as  well  as  distributive;  there  is  no  sharp  separation  of 
faculties,  and  progress  takes  place  rather  by  gradual 
adaptation  of  old  organs  to  new  functions  than  by 
disuse  and  decay. 

To  make  it  quite  clear  what  the  organic  view  in- 
volves, so  far  as  regards  theory,  I  will  take  several 
questions,  such  as  I  have  found  that  people  ask  when 
discussing  the  relation  of  society  and  the  individual, 
and  will  suggest  how,  as  it  seems  to  me,  they  may  be 
answered. 

47 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

1.  Is  not  society,  after  all,  made  up  of  individuals, 
and  of  nothing  else? 

I  should  say,  Yes.  It  is  plain,  every-day  humanity, 
not  a  mysterious  something  else. 

2.  Is  society  anything  more  than  the  sum  of  the  in- 
dividuals? 

In  a  sense,  Yes.  There  is  an  organization,  a  life- 
process,  in  any  social  whole  that  you  cannot  see  in  the 
individuals  separately.  To  study  them  one  by  one 
and  attempt  to  understand  society  by  putting  them 
together  will  lead  you  astray.  It  is  "individualism" 
in  a  bad  sense  of  the  word.  Whole  sciences,  like  politi- 
cal economy;  great  institutions,  like  the  church,  have 
gone  wrong  at  this  point.  You  must  see  your  groups, 
your  social  processes,  as  the  living  wholes  that  they 
are. 

3.  Is  the  individual  a  product  of  society? 

Yes,  in  the  sense  that  everything  human  about  him 
has  a  history  in  the  social  past.  If  we  consider  the 
two  sources  from  which  he  draws  his  life,  heredity  and 
communication,  we  see  that  what  he  gets  through  the 
germ-plasm  has  a  social  history  in  that  it  has  had  to 
adapt  itself  to  past  society  in  order  to  survive:  the 
traits  we  are  born  with  are  such  as  have  undergone  a 
social  test  in  the  lives  of  our  ancestors.  And  what  he 
gets  from  communication — language,  education,  and 
the  like — comes  directly  from  society.  Even  physical 
influences,  like  food  and  climate,  rarely  reach  us  ex- 
cept as  modified  and  adapted  by  social  conditions. 

4.  Can  we  separate  the  individual  from  society? 
Only  in  an  external  sense.     If  you  go  off  alone  into 

48 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

the  wilderness  you  take  with  you  a  mind  formed  in\ 
society,  and  you  continue  social  intercourse  in  your  / 
memory  and  imagination,   or  by  the  aid   of  books/ 
This,  and  this  only,  keeps  humanity  alive  in  you,  and 
just  in  so  far  as  you  lose  the  power  of  intercourse  your 
mind  decays.     Long  solitude,  as  in  the  case  of  sheep- 
herders  on  the  Western  plains,  or  prisoners  in  solitary 
confinement,  often  produces  imbecility.     This  is  es- 
pecially likely  to  happen  with  the  uneducated,  whose 
memories  are  not  well  stored  with  material  for  imagi- 
native intercourse. 

At  times  in  the  history  of  Christianity,  and  of  other 
religions  also,  hermits  have  gone  to  dwell  in  desert 
places,  but  they  have  usually  kept  up  some  communi- 
cation with  one  another  and  with  the  world  outside, 
certain  of  them,  like  St.  Jerome,  having  been  famous 
letter-writers.  Each  of  them,  in  fact,  belonged  to  a 
social  system  from  which  he  drew  ideals  and  moral 
support.  We  may  suspect  that  St,  Simeon  Stylites, 
who  dwelt  for  years  on  top  of  a  pillar,  was  not  unaware 
that  his  austerity  was  visible  to  others. 

A  castaway  who  should  be  unable  to  retain  his 
imaginative  hold  upon  human  society  might  conceiv- 
ably live  the  life  of  an  intelligent  animal,  exercising  his 
mind  upon  the  natural  conditions  about  him,  but  his 
distinctively  human  faculties  would  certainly  be  lost, 
or  in  abeyance. 

5.  Is  the  individual  in  any  sense  free,  or  is  he  a 
mere  piece  of  society? 

Yes,  he  is  free,  as  I  conceive  the  matter,  but  it  is 
an  organic  freedom,  which  he  works  out  in  co-operation 

49 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

with  others,  not  a  freedom  to  do  things  independently 
of  society.  It  is  team-work.  He  has  freedom  to  func- 
tion in  his  own  way,  like  the  quarter-back,  but,  in  one 
way  or  another,  he  has  to  play  the  game  as  life  brings 
him  into  it. 

The  evolutionary  point  of  view  encourages  us  to 
believe  that  life  is  a  creative  process,  that  we  are 
really  building  up  something  new  and  worth  while, 
and  that  the  human  will  is  a  part  of  the  creative  energy 
that  does  this.  Every  individual  has  his  unique  share 
in  the  work,  which  no  one  but  himself  can  discern  and 
perform.  Although  his  life  flows  into  him  from  the 
hereditary  and  social  past,  his  being  as  a  whole  is  new, 
a  fresh  organization  of  life.  Never  any  one  before  had 
the  same  powers  and  opportunities  that  you  have,  and 
you  are  free  to  use  them  in  your  own  way. 

It  is,  after  all,  only  common  sense  to  say  that  we 
exercise  our  freedom  through  co-operation  with  others. 
If  you  join  a  social  group — let  us  say  a  dramatic  club 
— you  expect  that  it  will  increase  your  freedom,  give 
your  individual  powers  new  stimulus  and  opportunity 
for  expression.  And  why  should  not  the  same  prin- 
ciple apply  to  society  at  large  ?  It  is  through  a  social 
development  that  mankind  has  emerged  from  animal 
bondage  into  that  organic  freedom,  wonderful  though 
far  from  complete,  that  we  now  enjoy. 


50 


CHAPTER  II 
SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

THE  MEANING  OP  THESE  TERMS  AND  THEIR  RELATION  TO  EACH 
OTHER — INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  ASPECTS  OF  WILL  OR  CHOICE 
— SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE  IN  CHILDREN — THE  SCOPE  OP 
SUGGESTION  COMMONLY  UNDERESTIMATED — PRACTICAL  LIMITA- 
TIONS UPON  DELIBERATE  CHOICE — ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  THE  AC- 
TION OF  THE  MILIEU — CLASS  ATMOSPHERES — OUR  UNCONSCIOUS- 
NESS OF  OUR  EPOCH — THE  GREATER  OR  LESS  ACTIVITY  OP 
CHOICE   REFLECTS  THE   STATE   OF  SOCIETY — SUGGESTIBILITY 

The  antithesis  between  suggestion  and  choice  is 
another  of  those  familiar  ideas  which  are  not  always 
so  clear  as  they  should  be. 

The  word  suggestion  is  used  here  to  denote  an  in- 
fluence that  works  in  a  comparatively  mechanical  or 
reflex  way,  without  calling  out  that  higher  selective 
activity  of  the  mind  implied  in  choice  or  will.  Thus 
the  hypnotic  subject  who  performs  apparently  mean- 
ingless actions  at  the  word  of  the  operator  is  said  to 
be  controlled  by  suggestion;  so  also  is  one  who  catches 
up  tricks  of  speech  and  action  from  other  people  with- 
out meaning  to.  From  such  instances  the  idea  is  ex- 
tended to  embrace  any  thought  or  action  which  is 
mentally  simple  and  seems  not  to  involve  choice.  The 
behavior  of  people  under  strong  emotion  is  suggestive; 
crowds  are  suggestible;  habit  is  a  kind  of  suggestion, 
and  so  on. 

I  prefer  this  word  to  imitation,  which  some  use  in 
this  or  a  similar  sense,  because  the  latter,  as  ordinarily 

51 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

understood,  seems  to  cover  too  little  in  some  directions 
and  too  much  in  others.  In  common  use  it  means  an 
action  that  results  in  visible  or  audible  resemblance. 
Now,  although  our  simple  reactions  to  the  influence  of 
others  are  largely  of  this  sort,  they  are  by  no  means 
altogether  so;  the  actions  of  a  child  during  the  first 
six  months  of  life,  for  instance,  are  very  little  imitative 
in  this  sense;  on  the  other  hand,  the  imitation  that 
produces  a  visible  resemblance  may  be  a  voluntary 
process  of  the  most  complex  sort  imaginable,  like  the 
skilful  painting  of  a  portrait.  However,  it  makes  little 
difference  what  words  we  use  if  we  have  sound  mean- 
ings back  of  them,  and  I  am  far  from  intending  to  find 
fault  with  writers,  like  Professor  Baldwin  and  M. 
Tarde,  who  adopt  the  word  and  give  it  a  wide  and  un- 
usual application.  For  my  purpose,  however,  it  does 
not  seem  expedient  to  depart  so  far  from  ordinary 
usage. 

The  distinction  between  suggestion  and  choice  is 
not,  I  think,  a  sharp  opposition  between  separable  or 
radically  different  things,  but  rather  a  way  of  indi- 
cating the  lower  and  higher  stages  of  a  series.  What 
we  call  choice  or  will  appears  to  be  an  ill-defined  area 
of  more  strenuous  mental  activity  within  a  much  wider 
field  of  activity  similar  in  kind  but  less  intense.  It  is 
not  sharply  divisible  from  the  mass  of  involuntary 
thought.  The  truth  is  that  the  facts  of  the  mind,  of 
society,  indeed  of  any  living  whole,  seldom  admit  of 
sharp  division,  but  show  gradual  transitions  from  one 
thing  to  another:  there  are  no  fences  in  these  regions. 
We  speak  of  suggestion  as  mechanical;  but  it  seems 

52 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

probable  that  all  psychical  life  is  selective,  or,  in  some 
sense,  choosing,  and  that  the  rudiments  of  conscious- 
ness and  will  may  be  discerned  or  inferred  in  the  sim- 
plest reaction  of  the  lowest  living  creature.  In  our 
own  minds  the  comparatively  simple  ideas  which  are 
^  called  suggestions  are  by  no  means  single  and  primary, 
but  each  one  is  itself  a  living,  shifting,  multifarious  bit 
of  life,  a  portion  of  the  fluid  "stream  of  thought" 
formed  by  some  sort  of  selection  and  synthesis  out  of 
simpler  elements.  On  the  other  hand,  our  most  elab- 
orate and  volitional  thought  and  action  is  suggested 
in  the  sense  that  it  consists  not  in  creation  out  of 
nothing,  but  in  a  creative  synthesis  or  reorganization 
of  old  material. 

The  distinction,  then,  is  one  of  degree  rather  than 
of  kind;  and  choice,  as  contrasted  with  suggestion,  is, 
in  its  individual  aspect,  a  comparatively  elaborate  process 
of  mental  organization  or  synthesis,  of  which  we  are  re- 
flectively aware,  and  which  is  rendered  necessary  by 
complexity  in  the  elements  of  our  thought.  In  its  so- 
cial aspect — for  all,  or  nearly  all,  our  choices  relate  in 
one  way  or  another  to  the  social  environment — it  is 
an  organization  of  comparatively  complex  social  relations. 
Precisely  as  the  conditions  about  us  and  the  ideas 
suggested  by  those  conditions  become  intricate,  are 
we  forced  to  think,  to  choose,  to  define  the  useful  and 
the  right,  and,  in  general,  to  work  out  the  higher  intel- 
lectual life.  When  life  is  simple,  thought  and  action 
are  comparatively  mechanical  or  suggestive;  the  higher 
consciousness  is  not  aroused,  the  reflective  will  has 
little  or  nothing  to  do;  the  captain  stays  below  and  the 

53 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

inferior  officers  work  the  ship.  But  when  life  is  diverse, 
thought  is  so  likewise,  and  the  mind  must  achieve  the 
higher  synthesis,  or  suffer  that  sense  of  division  which 
is  its  peculiar  pain.  In  short,  the  question  of  sugges- 
tion and  choice  is  only  another  view  of  the  question  of 
uniformity  and  complexity  in  social  relations. 

Will,  or  choice,  like  all  phases  of  mental  life,  may 
be  looked  at  either  in  a  particular  or  a  general  aspect; 
and  we  have,  accordingly,  individual  will  or  social 
will,  depending  upon  our  point  of  view,  as  to  whether 
we  regard  the  activity  singly  or  in  a  mass.  But 
there  is  no  real  separation;  they  are  only  different 
phases  of  the  same  thing.  Any  choice  that  I  can  make 
is  a  synthesis  of  suggestions  derived  in  one  way  or 
another  from  the  general  life;  and  it  also  reacts  upon 
that  life,  so  that  my  will  is  social  as  being  both  effect 
and  cause  with  reference  to  it.  If  I  buy  a  straw  hat 
you  may  look  at  my  action  separately,  as  my  indi- 
vidual choice,  or  as  part  of  a  social  demand  for  straw 
hats,  or  as  indicating  non-conformity  to  a  fashion  of 
wearing  some  other  sort  of  hats,  and  so  on.  There 
is  no  mystery  about  the  matter;  nothing  that  need 
puzzle  any  one  who  is  capable  of  perceiving  that  a 
thing  may  look  differently  from  different  standpoints, 
like  the  post  that  was  painted  a  different  color  on  each 
of  its  four  sides. 

It  is,  I  think,  a  mistake  of  superficial  readers  to 
imagine  that  psychologists  or  sociologists  are  trying 
to  depreciate  the  will,  or  that  there  is  any  tendency  to 
such  depreciation  in  a  sound  evolutionary  science  or 
philosophy.     The  trouble  with  the  popular  view  of 

54 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

will,  derived  chiefly  from  tradition,  is  not  that  it  exag- 
gerates its  importance,  which  would  perhaps  be  im- 
possible; but,  first,  that  it  thinks  of  will  only  in  the 
individual  aspect,  and  does  not  grasp  the  fact — plain 
enough  it  would  seem — that  the  act  of  choice  is  cause 
and  effect  in  a  general  life;  and,  second,  that  it  com- 
monly overlooks  the  importance  of  involuntary  forces, 
or  at  least  makes  them  separate  from  and  antithetical 
to  choice — as  if  the  captain  were  expected  to  work  the 
ship  all  alone,  or  in  opposition  to  the  crew,  instead  of 
using  them  as  subordinate  agents.  There  is  little 
use  in  arguing  abstractly  points  like  these;  but  if  the 
reader  who  may  be  puzzled  by  them  will  try  to  free 
himself  from  metaphysical  formulae,  and  determine 
to  see  the  facts  as  they  are,  he  will  be  in  a  way  to  get 
some  healthy  understanding  of  the  matter.* 

*  It  should  easily  be  understood  that  one  who  agrees  with 
what  was  said  in  the  preceding  chapter  about  the  relation  be- 
tween society  and  the  individual,  can  hardly  entertain  the 
question  whether  the  individual  will  is  free  or  externally  deter- 
mined. This  question  assumes  as  true  what  he  holds  to  be  false, 
namely,  that  the  particular  aspect  of  mankind  is  separable  from 
the  collective  aspect.  The  idea  underlying  it  is  that  of  an  isolated 
fragment  of  life,  the  will,  on  the  one  hand,  and  some  great  mass 
of  life,  the  environment,  on  the  other;  the  question  being  which 
of  these  two  antithetical  forces  shall  be  master.  If  one,  then  the 
will  is  free;  if  the  other,  then  it  is  determined.  It  is  as  if  each 
man's  mind  were  a  castle  besieged  by  an  army,  and  the  question 
were  whether  the  army  should  make  a  breach  and  capture  the 
occupants.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  this  way  of  conceiving  the 
matter  could  arise  from  a  direct  observation  of  actual  social 
relations.  Take,  for  instance,  the  case  of  a  member  of  Congress, 
or  of  any  other  group  of  reasoning,  feeling,  and  mutually  influ- 
encing creatures.  Is  he  free  in  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  body 
or  do  they  control  him?  The  question  appears  senseless.  He 
is  influenced  by  them  and  also  exerts  an  influence  upon  them. 
While  he  is  certainly  not  apart  from  their  power,  he  is  controlled, 

55 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

By  way  of  illustrating  these  general  statements  I 
shall  first  offer  a  few  remarks  concerning  suggestion 
and  choice  in  the  life  of  children,  and  then  go  on  to 
discuss  their  working  in  adult  life  and  upon  the  career 
as  a  whole. 

There  appears  to  be  quite  a  general  impression  that 
children  are  far  more  subject  to  control  through  sug- 
gestion or  mechanical  imitation  than  grown-up  people 
are;  in  other  words,  that  their  volition  is  less  active. 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  this  is  the  case:  their  choices 
are,  as  a  rule,  less  stable  and  consistent  than  ours, 

if  we  use  that  word,  through  his  own  will  and  not  in  spite  of  it. 
And  it  seems  plain  enough  that  a  relation  similar  in  kind  holds 
between  the  individual  and  the  nation,  or  between  the  individual 
and  humanity  in  general.  If  you  think  of  human  life  as  a  whole 
and  of  each  individual  as  a  member  and  not  a  fragment,  as,  in  my 
opinion,  you  must  if  you  base  your  thoughts  on  a  direct  study  of 
society  and  not  upon  metaphysical  or  theological  preconceptions, 
the  question  whether  the  will  is  free  or  not  is  seen  to  be  mean- 
ingless. The  individual  will  appears  to  be  a  specialized  part 
of  the  general  life,  more  or  less  divergent  from  other  parts  and 
possibly  contending  with  them;  but  this  very  divergence  is  a 
part  of  its  function — just  as  a  member  of  Congress  serves  that 
body  by  urging  his  particular  opinions — and  in  a  large  view  does 
not  separate  but  unites  it  to  life  as  a  whole.  It  is  often  necessary 
to  consider  the  individual  with  reference  to  his  opposition  to 
other  persons,  or  to  prevailing  tendencies,  and  in  so  doing  it 
may  be  convenient  to  speak  of  him  as  separate  from  and  anti- 
thetical to  the  life  about  him:  but  this  separateness  and  opposi- 
tion are  incidental,  like  the  right  hand  pulling  against  the  left 
to  break  a  string,  and  there  seems  to  be  no  sufficient  warrant 
for  extending  it  into  a  general  or  philosophical  proposition. 

There  may  be  some  sense  in  which  the  question  of  the  freedom 
of  the  will  is  still  of  interest;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  student 
of  social  relations  may  well  pass  it  by  as  one  of  those  scholastic 
controversies  which  are  settled,  if  at  all,  not  by  being  decided 
one  way  or  the  other,  but  by  becoming  obsolete. 

56 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

their  minds  have  less  definiteness  of  organization,  so 
that  their  actions  appear  less  rational  and  more  ex- 
ternally determined;  but  on  the  other  hand  they 
have  less  of  the  mechanical  subjection  to  habit  that 
goes  with  a  settled  character.  Choice  is  a  process  of 
growth,  of  progressive  mental  organization  through 
selection  and  assimilation  of  the  materials  which  life 
presents,  and  this  process  is  surely  never  more  vigor- 
ous than  in  childhood  and  youth.  It  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  the  choosing  and  formative  vigor  of  the 
mind  is  greater  under  the  age  of  twenty-five  than 
after:  the  will  of  middle  age  is  stronger  in  the  sense 
that  it  has  more  momentum,  but  it  has  less  accelera- 
tion, runs  more  on  habit,  and  so  is  less  capable  of  fresh 
choice. 

I  am  distrustful  of  that  plausible  but  possibly  illu- 
sive analogy  between  the  mind  of  the  child  and  the 
mind  of  primitive  man,  which,  in  this  connection,  would 
suggest  a  like  simplicity  and  inertness  of  thought  in 
the  two.  Our  children  achieve  in  a  dozen  years  a 
mental  development  much  above  that  of  savages,  and 
supposing  that  they  do,  in  some  sense,  recapitulate  the 
progress  of  the  race,  they  certainly  cover  the  ground 
at  a  very  different  rate  of  speed,  which  involves  a 
corresponding  intensity  of  mental  life.  After  the  first 
year  certainly,  if  not  from  birth,  they  share  our  social 
order,  and  we  induct  them  so  rapidly  into  its  complex 
life  that  their  minds  have  perhaps  as  much  novelty 
and  diversity  to  synthetize  as  ours  do. 

Certainly  one  who  begins  to  observe  children  with 
a  vague  notion  that  their  actions,  after  the  first  few 

57 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

months,  are  almost  all  mechanically  imitative,  is 
likely  to  be  surprised.  I  had  this  notion,  derived, 
perhaps  without  much  warrant,  from  a  slight  acquaint- 
ance with  writings  on  child-study  current  previous 
to  1893,  when  my  first  child  was  born.  He  was  a  boy 
— I  will  call  him  R. — in  whom  imitativeness,  as  ordi- 
narily understood,  happened  to  be  unusually  late  in 
its  development.  Until  he  was  more  than  two  years 
and  a  half  old  all  that  I  noticed  that  was  obviously 
imitative,  in  the  sense  of  a  visible  or  audible  repeti- 
tion of  the  acts  of  others,  was  the  utterance  of  about 
six  words  that  he  learned  to  say  during  his  second  year. 
It  is  likely  that  very  close  observation,  assisted  by 
the  clearer  notion  of  what  to  look  for  that  comes  by 
experience,  would  have  discovered  more:  but  no  more 
was  obvious  to  ordinary  expectant  attention.  The 
obvious  thing  was  his  constant  use  of  experiment  and 
reflection,  and  the  slow  and  often  curious  results  that 
he  attained  in  this  manner.  At  two  and  a  half  he  had 
learned,  for  instance,  to  use  a  fork  quite  skilfully.  The 
wish  to  use  it  was  perhaps  an  imitative  impulse,  in  a 
sense,  but  his  methods  were  original  and  the  outcome 
of  a  long  course  of  independent  and  reflective  experi- 
ment. His  skill  was  the  continuation  of  a  dexterity 
previously  acquired  in  playing  with  long  pins,  which 
he  ran  into  cushions,  the  interstices  of  his  carriage, 
etc.  The  fork  was  apparently  conceived  as  an  inter- 
esting variation  upon  the  hatpin,  and  not,  primarily, 
as  a  means  of  getting  food  or  doing  what  others  did. 
In  creeping  or  walking,  at  which  he  was  very  slow, 
partly  on  account  of  a  lame  foot,  he  went  through  a 

58 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

similar  series  of  devious  experiments,  which  apparently 
had  no  reference  to  what  he  saw  others  do. 

He  did  not  begin  to  talk — beyond  using  the  few 
words  already  mentioned — until  over  two  years  and 
eight  months  old;  having  previously  refused  to  in- 
terest himself  in  it,  although  he  understood  others 
as  well,  apparently,  as  any  child  of  his  age.  He 
preferred  to  make  his  wants  known  by  grunts  and 
signs;  and  instead  of  delighting  in  imitation  he  evi- 
dently liked  better  a  kind  of  activity  that  was  only 
indirectly  connected  with  the  suggestions  of  others. 

I  frequently  tried  to  produce  imitation,  but  al- 
most wholly  without  success.  For  example,  when  he 
was  striving  to  accomplish  something  with  his  blocks 
I  would  intervene  and  show  him,  by  example,  how,  as 
I  thought,  it  might  be  done,  but  these  suggestions  were 
invariably,  so  far  as  I  remember  or  have  recorded, 
received  with  indifference  or  protest.  He  liked  to 
puzzle  it  out  quietly  for  himself,  and  to  be  shown  how 
to  do  a  thing  often  seemed  to  destroy  his  interest  in 
it.  Yet  he  would  profit  by  observation  of  others  in 
his  own  fashion,  and  I  sometimes  detected  him  making 
use  of  ideas  to  which  he  seemed  to  pay  no  attention 
when  they  were  first  presented.  In  short,  he  showed 
that  aversion,  which  minds  of  a  pondering,  constructive 
turn  perhaps  always  show,  to  anything  which  suddenly 
and  crudely  broke  in  upon  his  system  of  thought.  At 
the  same  time  that  he  was  so  backward  in  the  ordi- 
nary curriculum  of  childhood,  he  showed  in  other  ways, 
which  it  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  describe,  that 
comparison  and  reflection  were  well  developed.     This 

59 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

preoccupation  with  private  experiment  and  reflection, 
and  reluctance  to  learn  from  others,  were  undoubtedly 
a  cause  of  his  slow  development,  particularly  in  speech, 
his  natural  aptitude  for  which  appeared  in  a  good  enun- 
ciation and  a  marked  volubility  as  soon  as  he  really 
began  to  talk. 

Imitation  came  all  at  once:  he  seemed  to  perceive 
quite  suddenly  that  this  was  a  short  cut  to  many 
things,  and  took  it  up,  not  in  a  merely  mechanical  or 
suggestive  way,  but  consciously,  intelligently,  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  The  imitative  act,  however,  was 
often  an  end  in  itself,  an  interesting  exercise  of  his 
constructive  faculties,  pursued  at  first  without  much 
regard  to  anything  beyond.  This  was  the  case  with 
the  utterance  of  words,  and,  later,  with  spelling,  with 
each  of  which  he  became  fascinated  for  its  own  sake 
and  regardless  of  its  use  as  a  means  of  communication. 

In  a  second  child,  M.,  a  girl,  I  was  able  to  observe 
the  working  of  a  mind  of  a  different  sort,  and  of  a 
much  more  common  type  as  regards  imitation.  When 
two  months  and  seven  days  old  she  was  observed  to 
make  sounds  in  reply  to  her  mother  when  coaxed  with 
a  certain  pitch  and  inflection  of  voice.  These  sounds 
were  clearly  imitative,  since  they  were  seldom  made  at 
other  times,  but  not  mechanically  so.  They  were  pro- 
duced with  every  appearance  of  mental  effort  and  of 
delight  in  its  success.  Only  vocal  imitations,  of  this 
rudimentary  sort,  were  observed  until  eight  months 
was  nearly  reached,  when  the  first  manual  imitation, 
striking  a  button-hook  upon  the  back  of  a  chair,  was 
noticed.     This  action  had  been  performed  experimen- 

60 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

tally  before,  and  the  imitation  was  merely  a  repetition 
suggested  by  seeing  her  mother  do  it,  or  perhaps  by 
hearing  the  sound.  After  this  the  development  of 
imitative  activity  proceeded  much  in  the  usual  way, 
which  has  often  been  described. 

In  both  of  these  cases  I  was  a  good  deal  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  the  life  of  children,  as  compared 
with  that  of  adults,  is  less  determined  in  a  merely  sug- 
gestive way,  and  involves  more  will  and  choice,  than 
is  commonly  supposed.  Imitation,  in  the  sense  of 
visible  or  audible  repetition,  was  not  so  omnipresent 
as  I  had  expected,  and  when  present  seemed  to  be  in 
great  part  rational  and  voluntary  rather  than  mechani- 
cal. It  is  very  natural  to  assume  that  to  do  what 
some  one  else  does  requires  no  mental  effort ;  but  this, 
as  applied  to  little  children,  is,  of  course,  a  great  mis- 
take. They  cannot  imitate  an  act  except  by  learning 
how  to  do  it,  any  more  than  grown-up  people  can,  and 
for  a  child  to  learn  a  word  may  be  as  complicated  a 
process  as  for  an  older  person  to  learn  a  difficult  piece 
on  the  piano.  A  novel  imitation  is  not  at  all  mechani- 
cal, but  a  strenuous  voluntary  activity,  accompanied 
by  effort  and  followed  by  pleasure  in  success.  All 
sympathetic  observers  of  children  must  be  impressed, 
I  imagine,  by  the  evident  mental  stress  and  concen- 
tration which  often  accompanies  their  endeavors, 
whether  imitative  or  not,  and  is  followed,  as  in  adults, 
by  the  appearance  of  relief  when  the  action  has  come 
off  successfully.* 

*  The  imitativeness  of  children  is  stimulated  by  the  imita- 
tiveness  of  parents.     A  baby  cannot  hit  upon  any  sort  of  a 

61 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  "imitative  instinct"  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as 
if  it  were  a  mysterious  something  that  enabled  the 
child  to  perform  involuntarily  and  without  prepara- 
tion acts  that  are  quite  new  to  him.  It  will  be  found 
difficult,  if  one  reflects  upon  the  matter,  to  conceive 
what  could  be  the  nature  of  an  instinct  or  hereditary 
tendency,  not  to  do  a  definite  thing  previously  per- 
formed by  our  ancestors — as  is  the  case  with  ordinary 
instinct — but  to  do  anything,  within  vague  limits, 
which  happened  to  be  done  within  our  sight  or  hear- 
ing. This  doing  of  new  things  without  definite  prepa- 
ration, either  in  heredity  or  experience,  would  seem 
to  involve  something  like  special  creation  in  the  men- 
tal and  nervous  organism:  and  the  imitation  of  chil- 
dren has  no  such  character.  It  is  quite  evidently  an 
acquired  power,  and  if  the  act  imitated  is  at  all  com- 
plex the  learning  process  involves  a  good  deal  of 
thought  and  will.  If  there  is  an  imitative  instinct  it 
must,  apparently,  be  something  in  the  way  of  a  taste 
for  repetition,  which  stimulates  the  learning  process 
without,  however,  having  any  tendency  to  dispense 
with  it.  The  taste  for  repetition  seems,  in  fact,  to 
exist,  at  least  in  most  children,  but  even  this  may  be 
sufficiently  explained  as  a  phase  of  the  general  mental 
tendency  to  act  upon  uncontradicted  ideas.  It  is  a 
doctrine  now  generally  taught  by  psychologists  that 

noise,  but  the  admiring  family,  eager  for  communication,  will 
imitate  it  again  and  again,  hoping  to  get  a  repetition.  They 
are  usually  disappointed,  but  the  exercise  probably  causes  the 
child  to  notice  the  likeness  of  the  sounds  and  so  prepares  the 
way  for  imitation.  It  is  perhaps  safe  to  say  that  up  to  the  end 
of  the  first  year  the  parents  are  more  imitative  than  the  child. 

62 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

the  idea  of  an  action  is  itself  a  motive  to  that  action, 
and  tends  intrinsically  to  produce  it  unless  something 
intervenes  to  prevent.  This  being  the  case,  it  would 
appear  that  we  must  always  have  some  impulse  to  do 
what  we  see  done,  provided  it  is  something  we  under- 
stand sufficiently  to  be  able  to  form  a  definite  idea  of 
doing  it.*  I  am  inclined  to  the  view  that  it  is  un- 
necessary to  assume,  in  man,  a  special  imitative  in- 
stinct, but  that,  "as  Preyer  and  others  have  shown  in 
the  case  of  young  children,  mimicry  arises  mainly  from 
pleasure  in  activity  as  such,  and  not  from  its  peculiar 
quality  as  imitation."  f  An  intelligent  child  imitates 
because  he  has  faculties  crying  for  employment,  and 
imitation  is  a  key  that  lets  them  loose:  he  needs  to  do 
things  and  imitation  gives  him  things  to  do.  An  in- 
dication that  sensible  resemblance  to  the  acts  of  others 
is  not  the  main  thing  sought  is  seen  in  such  cases  as 
the  following:  M.  had  a  trick  of  raising  her  hands 
above  her  head,  which  she  would  perform,  when  in 
the  mood  for  it,  either  imitatively,  when  some  one  else 
did  it,  or  in  response  to  the  words  "How  big  is  M.?" 
but  she  responded  more  readily  in  the  second  or  non- 
imitative  way  than  in  the  other.  This  example  well 
illustrates  the  reason  for  my  preference  of  the  word 
suggestion  over  imitation  to  describe  these  simple  re- 

*  "In  like  manner  any  act  or  expression  is  a  stimulus  to  the 
nerve-centres  that  perceive  or  understand  it.  Unless  this 
action  is  inhibited  by  the  will,  or  by  counter-stimulation,  they 
must  discharge  themselves  in  movements  that  more  or  less 
closely  copy  the  originals." — Giddings,  Principles  of  Sociology, 
110. 

t  H.  M.  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling, 
p.  53. 

63 


'     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

actions.  In  this  case  the  action  performed  had  no  sort 
of  resemblance  to  the  form  of  words  "  How  big  is  M.  ?" 
that  started  it,  and  could  be  called  imitative  only  in  a 
recondite  sense.  All  that  is  necessary  is  that  there 
should  be  a  suggestion,  that  something  should  be  pre- 
sented that  is  connected  in  the  child's  mind  with  the 
action  to  be  produced.  Whether  this  connection  is  by 
sensible  resemblance  or  not  seems  immaterial. 

There  seems  to  be  some  opposition  between  imita- 
tion of  the  visible,  external  kind,  and  reflection.  Chil- 
dren of  one  sort  are  attracted  by  sensible  resemblance 
and  so  are  early  and  conspicuously  imitative.  If  this 
is  kept  up  in  a  mechanical  way  after  the  acts  are  well 
learned,  and  at  the  expense  of  new  efforts,  it  would 
seem  to  be  a  sign  of  mental  apathy,  or  even  defect,  as 
in  the  silly  mimicry  of  .some  idiots.  Those  of  another 
sort  are  preoccupied  by  the  subtler  combinations  of 
thought  which  do  not,  as  a  rule,  lead  to  obvious  imi- 
tation. Such  children  are  likely  to  be  backward  in 
the  development  of  active  faculties,  and  slow  to  ob- 
serve except  where  their  minds  are  specially  interested. 
They  are  also,  if  I  may  judge  by  R.,  slow  to  interpret 
features  and  tones  of  voice,  guileless  and  unaffected, 
just  because  of  this  lack  of  keen  personal  perceptions, 
and  not  quickly  sympathetic. 

Accordingly,  it  is  not  at  all  clear  that  children  are, 
on  the  whole,  any  more  given  to  imitation  of  the  me- 
chanical sort,  any  more  suggestible,  than  adults.  They 
appear  so  to  us  chiefly,  perhaps,  for  two  reasons.  In 
the  first  place,  we  fail  to  realize  the  thought,  the  will, 
the  effort,  they  expend  upon  their  imitations.     They 

64 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

do  things  that  have  become  mechanical  to  us,  and  we 
assume  that  they  are  mechanical  to  them,  though 
closer  observation  and  reflection  would  show  us  the 
contrary.  These  actions  are  largely  daring  experi- 
ments, strenuous  syntheses  of  previously  acquired 
knowledge,  comparable  in  quality  to  our  own  most 
earnest  efforts,  and  not  to  the  thoughtless  routine  of 
our  lives.  We  do  not  see  that  their  echoing  of  the 
words  they  hear  is  often  not  a  silly  repetition,  but  a 
difficult  and  instructive  exercise  of  the  vocal  apparatus. 
Children  imitate  much  because  they  are  growing  much, 
and  imitation  is  a  principal  means  of  growth.  This  is 
true  at  any  age;  the  more  alive  and  progressive  a  man 
is  the  more  actively  he  is  admiring  and  profiting  by 
his  chosen  models. 

A  second  reason  is  that  adults  imitate  at  longer 
range,  as  it  were,  so  that  the  imitative  character  of 
their  acts  is  not  so  obvious.  They  come  into  contact 
with  more  sorts  of  persons,  largely  unknown  to  one 
another,  and  have  access  to  a  greater  variety  of  sug- 
gestions in  books.  Accordingly  they  present  a  de- 
ceitful appearance  of  independence  simply  because  we 
do  not  see  their  models. 

Though  we  may  be  likely  to  exaggerate  the  differ- 
ence between  children  and  adults  as  regards  the  sway 
of  suggestive  influences,  there  is  little  danger  of  our 
overestimating  the  importance  of  these  in  the  life  of 
mankind  at  large.  The  common  impression  among 
those  who  have  given  no  special  study  to  the  matter 
appears  to  be  that  suggestion  has  little  part  in  the  ma- 

65 


HUMAN    NATURE   AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ture  life  of  a  rational  being;  and  though  the  control  of 
involuntary  impulses  is  recognized  in  tricks  of  speech 
and  manner,  in  fads,  fashions,  and  the  like,  it  is  not 
perceived  to  touch  the  more  important  points  of  con- 
duct. The  fact,  however,  is  that  the  main  current  of 
our  thought  is  made  up  of  impulses  absorbed  without 
deliberate  choice  from  the  life  about  us,  or  else  arising 
from  hereditary  instinct,  or  from  habit;  while  the  func- 
tion of  higher  thought  and  of  will  is  to  organize  and 
apply  these  impulses.  To  revert  to  an  illustration 
already  suggested,  the  voluntary  is  related  to  the  in- 
voluntary very  much  as  the  captain  of  a  ship  is  related 
to  the  seamen  and  subordinate  officers.  Their  work 
is  not  altogether  of  a  different  sort  from  his,  but  is  of 
a  lower  grade  in  a  mental  series.  He  supplies  the  higher 
sort  of  co-ordination,  but  the  main  bulk  of  the  activity 
is  of  the  mentally  lower  order. 

The  chief  reason  why  popular  attention  should  fix 
itself  upon  voluntary  thought  and  action,  and  tend  to 
overlook  the  involuntary,  is  that  choice  is  acutely 
conscious,  and  so  must,  from  its  very  nature,  be  the 
focus  of  introspective  thought.  Because  he  is  an 
individual,  a  specialized,  contending  bit  of  psychical 
force,  a  man  very  naturally  holds  his  will,  in  its  indi- 
vidual aspect,  to  be  of  supreme  moment.  If  we  did 
not  feel  a  great  importance  in  the  things  we  do  we 
could  not  will  to  do  them.  And  in  the  life  of  other 
people  voluntary  action  seems  supreme,  for  very  much 
the  same  reasons  that  it  does  in  our  own.  It  is  alwa3rs 
in  the  foreground,  active,  obvious,  intrusive,  the  thing 
that   creates   differences   and   so   fixes   the   attention. 

66 


SUGGESTION   AND  CHOICE 

We  notice  nothing  except  through  contrast;  and  ac- 
cordingly the  mechanical  control  of  suggestion,  affect- 
ing all  very  much  alike,  is  usually  unperccived.  As  we 
do  not  notice  the  air,  precisely  because  it  is  always 
with  us,  so,  for  the  same  reason,  we  do  not  notice  a 
prevailing  mode  of  dress.  In  like  manner  we  are 
ignorant  of  our  local  accent  and  bearing,  and  are 
totally  unaware,  for  the  most  part,  of  all  that  is  com- 
mon to  our  time,  our  country,  our  customary  environ- 
ment. Choice  is  a  central  area  of  light  and  activity 
upon  which  our  eyes  are  fixed;  while  the  unconscious 
is  a  dark,  illimitable  background  enveloping  this  area. 
Or,  again,  choice  is  like  the  earth,  which  we  uncon- 
sciously assume  to  be  the  principal  part  of  creation, 
simply  because  it  is  the  centre  of  our  interest  and  the 
field  of  our  exertions. 

The  practical  limitations  upon  the  scope  of  choice 
arise,  first,  from  its  very  nature  as  a  selective  and 
organizing  agent,  working  upon  comparatively  simple 
or  suggestive  ideas  as  its  raw  material,  and,  second, 
from  the  fact  that  it  absorbs  a  great  deal  of  vital 
energy.  Owing  to  the  first  circumstance  its  activity 
is  always  confined  to  points  where  there  is  a  compe- 
tition of  ideas.  So  long  as  an  idea  is  uncontradicted, 
not  felt  to  be  in  any  way  inconsistent  with  others,  we 
take  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  is  a  truth,  though 
hard  for  us  to  realize,  that  if  we  had  lived  in  Dante's 
time  we  should  have  believed  in  a  material  Hell, 
Purgatory,  and  Paradise,  as  he  did,  and  that  our 
doubts  of  this,  and  of  many  other  things  which  his  age 

67 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

did  not  question,  have  nothing  to  do  with  our  nat- 
ural intelligence,  but  are  made  possible  and  neces- 
sary by  competing  ideas  which  the  growth  of  knowl- 
edge has  enabled  us  to  form.  Our  particular  minds 
or  wills  are  members  of  a  slowly  growing  whole,  and 
at  any  given  moment  are  limited  in  scope  by  the  state 
of  the  whole,  and  especially  of  those  parts  of  the 
whole  with  which  they  are  in  most  active  contact. 
Our  thought  is  never  isolated,  but  always  some  sort  of 
a  response  to  the  influences  around  us,  so  that  we  can 
hardly  have  thoughts  that  are  not  in  some  way  aroused 
by  communication.  Will — free  will  if  you  choose — 
is  thus  a  co-operative  whole,  not  an  aggregation  of 
disconnected  fragments,  and  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  freedom  under  law,  like  that  of  the  good 
citizen,  not  anarchy.  We  learn  to  speak  by  the  exer- 
cise of  will,  but  no  one,  I  suppose,  will  assert  that  an 
infant  who  hears  only  French  is  free  to  learn  English. 
Where  suggestions  are  numerous  and  conflicting  we 
feel  the  need  to  choose;  to  make  these  choices  is  the 
function  of  will,  and  the  result  of  them  is  a  step  in  the 
progress  of  life,  an  act  of  freedom  or  creation,  if  you 
wish  to  call  it  so;  but  where  suggestion  is  single,  as 
with  religious  dogma  in  ages  of  faith,  we  are  very  much 
at  its  mercy.  We  do  not  perceive  these  limitations, 
because  there  is  no  point  of  vantage  from  which  we 
can  observe  and  measure  the  general  state  of  thought; 
there  is  nothing  to  compare  it  with.  Only  when  it 
begins  to  change,  when  competing  suggestions  enter 
our  minds  and  we  get  new  points  of  view  from  which 

68 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

we  can  look  back  upon  it,  do  we  begin  to  notice  its 
power  over  us.* 

The  exhausting  character  of  choice,  of  making  up 
one's  mind,  is  a  matter  of  common  experience.  In 
some  way  the  mental  synthesis,  this  calling  in  and 
reducing  to  order  the  errant  population  of  the  mind, 
draws  severely  upon  the  vital  energy,  and  one  of  the 
invariable  signs  of  fatigue  is  a  dread  of  making  deci- 
sions and  assuming  responsibility.  In  our  compli- 
cated life  the  will  can,  in  fact,  manage  only  a  small 
part  of  the  competing  suggestions  that  are  within 
our  reach.  What  we  are  all  forced  to  do  is  to  choose 
a  field  of  action  which  for  some  reason  we  look  upon 
as  specially  interesting  or  important,  and  exercise 
our  choice  in  that;  in  other  matters  protecting  our- 
selves, for  the  most  part,  by  some  sort  of  mechanical 
control — some  accepted  personal  authority,  some  local 

*  Goethe,  in  various  places,  contrasts  modern  art  and  litera- 
ture with  those  of  the  Greeks  in  respect  to  the  fact  that  the  former 
express  individual  characteristics,  the  latter  those  of  a  race  and 
an  epoch.  Thus  in  a  letter  to  Schiller — No.  631  of  the  Goethe- 
Schiller  correspondence — he  says  of  Paradise  Lost,  "In  the  case 
of  this  poem,  as  with  all  modern  works  of  art,  it  is  in  reality  the 
individual  that  manifests  itself  that  awakens  the  interest." 

Can  there  be  some  illusion  mixed  with  the  truth  of  this  idea? 
Is  it  not  the  case  that  the  nearer  a  thing  is  to  our  habit  of  thought 
the  more  clearly  we  see  the  individual,  and  the  more  vaguely, 
if  at  all,  the  universal?  And  would  not  an  ancient  Greek,  per- 
haps, have  seen  as  much  of  what  was  peculiar  to  each  artist, 
and  as  little  of  what  was  common  to  all,  as  we  do  in  a  writer 
of  our  own  time?  The  principle  is  much  the  same  as  that  which 
makes  all  Chinamen  look  pretty  much  alike  to  us:  we  see  the 
type  because  it  is  so  different  from  what  we  are  used  to,  but 
only  one  who  lives  within  it  can  fully  perceive  the  differences 
among  individuals. 

69 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

custom,  some  professional  tradition,  or  the  like.  In- 
deed, to  know  where  and  how  to  narrow  the  activity 
of  the  will  in  order  to  preserve  its  tone  and  vigor  for 
its  most  essential  functions,  is  a  great  part  of  know- 
ing how  to  live.  An  incontinent  exercise  of  choice 
wears  people  out,  so  that  many  break  down  and  yield 
even  essentials  to  discipline  and  authority  in  some 
form;  while  many  more  wish,  at  times,  to  do  so  and 
indulge  themselves,  perhaps,  in  Thomas  a,  Kempis, 
or  "The  Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy  Life."  Not 
a  few  so  far  exhaust  the  power  of  self-direction  as  to  be 
left  drifting  at  the  mercy  of  undisciplined  passions. 
There  are  many  roads  to  degeneracy,  and  persons  of  an 
eager,  strenuous  nature  not  infrequently  take  this 
one. 

A  common  instance  of  the  insidious  power  of  milieu 
is  afforded  by  the  transition  from  university  educa- 
tion to  getting  a  living.  At  a  university  one  finds 
himself,  if  he  has  any  vigor  of  imagination,  in  one  of 
the  widest  environments  the  world  can  afford.  He 
has  access  to  the  suggestions  of  the  richest  minds  of 
all  times  and  countries,  and  has  also,  or  should  have, 
time  and  encouragement  to  explore,  in  his  own  way, 
this  spacious  society.  It  is  his  business  to  think,  to 
aspire,  and  grow;  and  if  he  is  at  all  capable  of  it  he 
does  so.  Philosophy  and  art  and  science  and  the 
betterment  of  mankind  are  real  and  living  interests 
to  him,  largely  because  he  is  in  the  great  stream  of 
higher  thought  that  flows  through  libraries.  Now 
let  him  graduate  and  enter,  we  will  say,    upon  the 

70 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

lumber  business  at  Kawkawlin.  Here  he  finds  the 
scope  of  existence  largely  taken  up  with  the  details 
of  this  industry — wholesome  for  him  in  some  ways,, 
but  likely  to  be  overemphasized.  These  and  a  few 
other  things  are  repeated  over  and  over  again,  dinned 
into  him,  everywhere  assumed  to  be  the  solid  things 
of  life,  so  that  he  must  believe  in  them;  while  the 
rest  grows  misty  and  begins  to  lose  hold  upon  him. 
He  cannot  make  things  seem  real  that  do  not  enter 
into  his  experience,  and  if  he  resists  the  narrowing 
environment  it  must  be  by  keeping  touch  with  a 
larger  world,  through  books  or  other  personal  inter- 
course, and  by  the  exercise  of  imagination.  Marcus 
Aurelius  told  himself  that  he  was  free  to  think  what 
he  chose,  but  it  appears  that  he  realized  this  freedom 
by  keeping  books  about  him  that  suggested  the  kind 
of  thoughts  he  chose  to  think;  and  it  is  only  in  some 
such  sense  as  this  implies  that  the  assertion  is  true. 
When  the  palpable  environment  does  not  suit  us  we 
can,  if  our  minds  are  vigorous  enough,  build  up  a 
better  one  out  of  remembered  material;  but  we  must 
have  material  of  some  sort. 

It  is  easy  to  feel  the  effect  of  surroundings  in  such 
cases  as  this,  because  of  the  sharp  and  definite  change, 
and  because  the  imagination  clings  to  one  state  long 
after  the  senses  are  subdued  to  the  other;  but  it  is  not 
so  with  national  habits  and  sentiments,  which  so  com- 
pletely envelop  us  that  we  are  for  the  most  part  un- 
aware of  them.  The  more  thoroughly  American  a 
man  is  the  less  he  can  perceive  Americanism.  He 
will  embody  it;  all  he  does,  says,  or  writes,  will  be  full 

71 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  it;  but  he  can  never  truly  see  it.  simply  because 
he  has  no  exterior  point  of  view  from  which  to  look  at 
it.  If  he  goes  to  Europe  he  begins  to  get  by  contrast 
some  vague  notion  of  it,  though  he  will  never  be  able 
to  see  just  what  it  is  that  makes  futile  his  attempts  to 
seem  an  Englishman,  a  German,  or  an  Italian.  Our 
appearance  to  other  peoples  is  like  one's  own  voice, 
which  one  never  hears  quite  as  others  hear  it,  and 
which  sounds  strange  when  it  comes  back  from  the 
phonograph. 

There  is  nothing  more  important  to  understand,  or 
less  understood,  than  the  class  atmospheres  in  which 
nearly  all  of  us  live.  We  usually  believe  that  the  way 
we  look  upon  social  and  economic  questions  is  the 
natural  way,  the  American  way,  the  right  way,  not 
perceiving  that  it  is  a  way  imposed  upon  us  by  sugges- 
tions which,  flowing  in  upon  us  from  the  people  with 
whom  we  associate,  determine  the  premises  of  our 
thought.  There  is  something  rathex  alarming,  to 
one  who  wishes  to  see  his  country  united,  in  the  s  /.:"- 
complacent  ignorance  which  men  in  one  class  show 
regarding  the  ideas  and  feelings  of  their  fellow  citizens 
in  another.  It  is  rare  to  find  among  business  or  pro- 
fessional men  any  real  comprehension  of  the  struggles 
and  aspirations  of  the  hand-working  class,  while  the 
contemptuous  attitude  of  the  native  toward  the  fan 
grant,  or  the  white  toward  the  negro,  is  inevitably 
answered  by  resentment  on  the  other  side.  The  t 
of  these  misunderstandings  is  the  lack  of  real  communi- 
cation.    We  mean  well  but  unless  we  understand  one 

:: 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

another  good  meanings  are  ineffective.  The  press, 
which  ought  to  interpret  social  classes  to  each  other, 
is  itself  divided  on  class  lines,  and  the  papers  and  maga- 
zines which  the  well-to-do  man  reads  confirm  him  in 
his  class  bias,  while  the  hand-worker  feeds  his  upon 
labor  and  socialist  publications.  Nor  do  the  common 
schools,  for  the  most  part,  give  the  children  instruction 
which  prepares  them  for  large  and  sympathetic  views. 
One  result  of  all  this  is  that  it  is  easy,  in  times  of 
excitement,  for  propagandists  to  arouse  dangerous 
suspicions  and  hostilities  of  one  class  against  another — 
as  was  shown  during  the  trying  period  immediately 
following  the  Great  War.  If  we  are  to  have  friendly 
co-operation,  among  classes  or  among  nations,  we  must 
begin  by  having  more  understanding. 

The  control  of  those  larger  movements  of  thought 
and  sentiment  that  make  a  historical  epoch  is  still 
less  conscious,  more  inevitable.  Only  the  imagina- 
tive student,  in  his  best  hours,  can  really  free  himself 
— and  that  only  in  some  respects — from  the  limita- 
tions of  his  time  and  see  things  from  a  height.  For 
the  most  part  the  people  of  other  epochs  seem  strange, 
outlandish,  or  a  little  insane.  We  can  scarcely  rid 
ourselves  of  the  impression  that  the  way  of  life 
we  are  used  to  is  the  normal,  and  that  other  ways 
are  eccentric.  Doctor  Sidis  holds  that  the  people 
of  the  Middle  Ages  were  in  a  quasi-hypnotic  state, 
and  instances  the  crusades,  dancing  manias,  and  the 
like.*  But  the  question  is,  would  not  our  own  time, 
*  See  the  latter  chapters  of  his  Psychology  of  Suggestion. 
73 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

viewed  from  an  equal  distance,  appear  to  present  the 
signs  of  abnormal  suggestibility?  Will  not  the  in- 
tense preoccupation  with  material  production,  the 
hurry  and  strain  of  our  cities,  the  draining  of  life  into 
one  channel,  at  the  expense  of  breadth,  richness,  and 
beauty,  appear  as  mad  as  the  crusades,  and  perhaps 
of  a  lower  type  of  madness?  Could  anything  be  more 
indicative  of  a  slight  but  general  insanity  than  the 
aspect  of  the  crowd  on  the  streets  of  Chicago? 

An  illustration  of  this  unconsciousness  of  what  is 
distinctive  in  our  time  is  the  fact  that  those  who  par- 
ticipate in  momentous  changes  have  seldom  any  but 
the  vaguest  notion  of  their  significance.  There  is 
perhaps  no  time  in  the  history  of  art  that  seems  to 
us  now  so  splendid,  so  dramatic,  as  that  of  the  sudden 
rise  of  Gothic  architecture  in  northern  France,  and 
the  erection  of  the  church  of  St.  Denis  at  Paris  was  its 
culmination:  yet  Professor  C.  E.  Norton,  speaking  of 
the  Abbot  Suger,  who  erected  it,  and  of  his  memoirs, 
says,  "Under  his  watchful  and  intelligent  oversight 
the  church  became  the  most  splendid  and  the  most 
interesting  building  of  the  century;  but  of  the  features 
that  gave  it  special  interest,  that  make  it  one  of  the 
most  important  monuments  of  mediaeval  architecture, 
neither  Suger.  in  his  account  of  it,  nor  his  biographer, 
nor  any  contemporary  writer,  says  a  single  word."  * 
To  Suger  and  his  time  the  Gothic,  it  would  seem, 
was  simply  a  new  and  improved  way  of  building  a 
church,  a  technical  matter  with  which  ho  had  little 
concern,  except  to  see  that  it  was  duly  carried  out 
*  See  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  79,  p.  770. 
74 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

according  to  specifications.  It  was  developed  by 
draughtsmen  and  handicraftsmen,  mostly  nameless, 
who  felt  their  own  thrill  of  constructive  delight  as  they 
worked,  but  had  no  thought  of  historical  glory.  It  is 
no  doubt  the  same  in  our  own  time,  and  Mr.  Bryce 
has  noted  with  astonishment  the  unconsciousness  or 
indifference  of  those  who  founded  cities  in  western 
America,  to  the  fact  that  they  were  doing  something 
that  would  be  memorable  and  influential  for  ages.* 

I  have  already  said,  or  implied,  that  the  activity 
of  the  will  reflects  the  state  of  the  social  order.  A 
constant  and  strenuous  exercise  of  volition  implies 
complexity  in  the  surrounding  life  from  which  sug- 
gestions come,  while  in  a  simple  society  choice  is  lim- 
ited in  scope  and  life  is  comparatively  mechanical. 
It  is  the  variety  of  social  intercourse  or,  what  comes 
to  the  same  thing,  the  character  of  social  organization, 
that  determines  the  field  of  choice;  and  accordingly 
there  is  a  tendency  for  the  scope  of  the  will  to  increase 
with  that  widening  and  intensification  of  life  that  is 
so  conspicuous  a  feature  of  recent  history.  This 
change  is  bound  up  with  the  extension  and  diffusion 
of  communication,  opening  up  innumerable  channels 
by  which  competing  suggestions  may  enter  the  mind. 
We  are  still  dependent  upon  environment — life  is 
always  a  give  and  take  with  surrounding  conditions — 
but  environment  is  becoming  very  wide,  and  in  the 
case  of  imaginative  persons  may  extend  itself  to  almost 
any  ideas  that  the  past  or  present  life  of  the  race  has 
*  See  The  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  ii,  p.  705. 
75 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

brought  into  being.  This  brings  opportunity  for  con- 
genial choice  and  characteristic  personal  growth,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  good  deal  of  distraction  and  strain. 
There  is  more  and  more  need  of  stability,  and  of  a 
vigorous  rejection  of  excessive  material,  if  one  would 
escape  mental  exhaustion  and  degeneracy.  Choice  is 
like  a  river;  it  broadens  as  it  comes  down  through 
history — though  there  are  always  banks — and  the  wider 
it  becomes  the  more  persons  drown  in  it.  Stronger 
and  stronger  swimming  is  required,  and  types  of  char- 
acter that  lack  vigor  and  self-reliance  are  more  and 
more  likely  to  go  under. 

The  aptitude  to  yield  to  impulse  in  a  mechanical 
or  reflex  way  is  called  suggestibility.  As  might  be 
expected,  it  is  subject  to  great  variations  in  different 
persons,  and  in  the  same  person  under  different  con- 
ditions. Abnormal  suggestibility  has  received  much 
study,  and  there  is  a  great  body  of  valuable  literature 
relating  to  it.  I  wish  in  this  connection  only  to  recall 
a  few  well-known  principles  which  the  student  of 
normal  social  life  needs  to  have  in  mind. 

As  would  naturally  follow  from  our  analysis  of  the 
relation  between  suggestion  and  choice,  suggestibility 
is  simply  the  absence  of  the  controlling  and  organiz- 
ing action  of  the  reflective  will.  This  function  not 
being  properly  performed,  thought  and  action  are 
disintegrated  and  fly  off  on  tangents;  the  captain 
being  disabled  the  crew  breaks  up  into  factions,  and 
discipline  goes  to  pieces.  Accordingly,  whatever  weak- 
ens the  reason,  and  thus  destroys  the  breadth  and 

76 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

symmetry  of  consciousness,  produces  some  form  of 
suggestibility.  To  be  excited  is  to  be  suggestible, 
that  is  to  become  liable  to  yield  impulsively  to  an  idea 
in  harmony  with  the  exciting  emotion.  An  angry 
man  is  suggestible  as  regards  denunciation,  threats, 
and  the  like,  a  jealous  one  as  regards  suspicions,  and 
similarly  with  any  passion. 

The  suggestibility  of  crowds  is  a  peculiar  form  of 
that  limitation  of  choice  by  the  environment  already 
discussed.  We  have  here  a  very  transient  environ- 
ment which  owes  its  power  over  choice  to  the  vague 
but  potent  emotion  so  easily  generated  in  dense  ag- 
gregates. The  thick  humanity  is  in  itself  exciting, 
and  the  will  is  further  stupefied  by  the  sense  of  insig- 
nificance, by  the  strangeness  of  the  situation,  and  by 
the  absence,  as  a  rule,  of  any  separate  purpose  to 
maintain  an  independent  momentum.  A  man  is  like 
a  ship  in  that  he  cannot  guide  his  course  unless  he  has 
way  on.  If  he  drifts  he  will  shift  about  with  any 
light  air;  and  the  man  in  the  crowd  is  usually  drift- 
ing, is  not  pursuing  any  settled  line  of  action  in  which 
he  is  sustained  by  knowledge  and  habit.  This  state 
of  mind,  added  to  intense  emotion  directed  by  some 
series  of  special  suggestions,  is  the  source  of  the  wild 
and  often  destructive  behavior  of  crowds  and  mobs, 
as  well  as  of  a  great  deal  of  heroic  enthusiasm.  An 
orator,  for  instance,  first  unifying  and  heightening 
the  emotional  state  of  his  audience  by  some  humorous 
or  pathetic  incident,  will  be  able,  if  tolerably  skilful, 
to  do  pretty  much  as  he  pleases  with  them,  so  long  as 
he  does  not  go  against  their  settled  habits  of  thought. 

77 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Anger,  always  a  ready  passion,  is  easily  aroused,  ap- 
peals to  resentment  being  the  staples  of  much  popular 
oratory,  and  under  certain  conditions  readily  expresses 
itself  in  stoning,  burning,  and  lynching.  And  so  with 
fear:  General  Grant,  in  describing  the  battle  of  Shiloh, 
gives  a  picture  of  several  thousand  men  on  a  hill-side 
in  the  rear,  incapable  of  moving,  though  threatened 
to  be  shot  for  cowardice  where  they  lay.  Yet  these 
very  men,  calmed  and  restored  to  their  places,  were 
among  those  who  heroically  fought  and  won  the  next 
day's  battle.  They  had  been  restored  to  the  domina- 
tion of  another  class  of  suggestions,  namely,  those 
implied  in  military  discipline.* 

Suggestibility  from  exhaustion  or  strain  is  a  rather 
common  condition  with  many  of  us.  Probably  all 
eager  brain  workers  find  themselves  now  and  then  in  a 
state  where  they  are  "too  tired  to  stop."  The  over- 
wrought mind  loses  the  healthy  power  of  casting  off 
its  burden,  and  seems  capable  of  nothing  but  going 
on  and  on  in  the  same  painful  and  futile  course.  One 
may  know  that  he  is  accomplishing  nothing,  that 
work  done  in  such  a  state  of  mind  is  always  bad  work, 
and  that  "that  way  madness  lies,"  but  yet  be  too 
weak  to  resist,  chained  to  the  wheel  of  his  thought  so 
that  he  must  wait  till  it  runs  down.  And  such  a  state, 
however  induced,  is  the  opportunity  for  all  sorts  of 
undisciplined  impulses,  perhaps  some  gross  passion, 
like  anger,  dread,  the  need  of  drink,  or  the  like. 

According    to    Mr.    Tylor,f    fasting,    solitude,    and 

*  Memoirs  of  U.  S.  Grant,  vol.  i,  p.  344. 
t  See  his  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii,  p.  372. 
78 


SUGGESTION  AND  CHOICE 

physical  exhaustion  by  dancing,  shouting,  or  flagel- 
lation are  very  generally  employed  by  savage  peoples 
to  bring  on  abnormal  states  of  mind  of  which  sug- 
gestibility— the  sleep  of  choice,  and  control  by  some 
idea  from  the  subconscious  life — is  always  a  trait. 
The  visions  and  ecstasies  following  the  fastings,  watch- 
ings,  and  flagellations  of  Christian  devotees  of  an 
earlier  time  seem  to  belong,  psychologically,  in  much 
the  same  category. 

It  is  well  known  that  suggestibility  is  limited  by 
habit,  or,  more  accurately  stated,  that  habit  is  itself 
a  perennial  source  of  suggestions  that  set  bounds  and 
conditions  upon  the  power  of  fresh  suggestions.  A 
total  abstainer  will  resist  the  suggestion  to  drink,  a 
modest  person  will  refuse  to  do  anything  indecent, 
and  so  on.  People  are  least  liable  to  yield  to  irra- 
tional suggestions,  to  be  stampeded  with  the  crowd, 
in  matters  with  which  they  are  familiar,  so  that  they 
have  habits  regarding  them.  The  soldier,  in  his 
place  in  the  ranks  and  with  his  captain  in  sight,  will 
march  forward  to  certain  death,  very  likely  without 
any  acute  emotion  whatever,  simply  because  he  has 
the  habits  that  constitute  discipline;  and  so  with 
firemen,  policemen,  sailors,  brakemen,  physicians,  and 
many  others  who  learn  to  deal  with  life  and  death  as 
calmly  as  they  read  a  newspaper.  It  is  all  in  the 
day's  work. 

As  regards  the  greater  or  less  suggestibility  of  dif- 
ferent persons  there  is,  of  course,  no  distinct  line  be- 
tween the  normal  and  the  abnormal;  it  is  simply  a 
matter  of  the  greater  or  less  efficiency  of  the  higher 

79 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

mental  organization.  Most  people,  perhaps,  are  so 
far  suggestible  that  they  make  no  energetic  and  per- 
sistent attempt  to  interpret  in  any  broad  way  the 
elements  of  life  accessible  to  them,  but  receive  the 
stamp  of  some  rather  narrow  and  simple  class  of  sug- 
gestions to  which  their  allegiance  is  yielded.  There 
are  innumerable  people  of  much  energy  but  sluggish 
intellect,  who  will  go  ahead — as  all  who  have  energy 
must  do — but  what  direction  they  take  is  a  matter  of 
the  opportune  suggestion.  The  humbler  walks  of 
religion  and  philanthropy,  for  instance,  the  Salvation 
Army,  the  village  prayer-meeting,  and  the  city  mis- 
sion, are  full  of  such.  They  do  not  reason  on  gen- 
eral topics,  but  believe  and  labor.  The  intellectual 
travail  of  the  time  does  not  directly  touch  them.  At 
some  epoch  in  the  past,  perhaps  in  some  hour  of  emo- 
tional exaltation,  something  was  printed  on  their 
minds  to  remain  there  till  death,  and  be  read  and  fol- 
lowed daily.  To  the  philosopher  such  people  are 
fanatics;  but  their  function  is  as  important  as  his. 
They  are  repositories  of  moral  energy — which  he  is 
very  likely  to  lack — they  are  the  people  who  brought 
in  Christianity  and  have  kept  it  going  ever  since. 
And  this  is  only  one  of  many  comparatively  auto- 
matic types  of  mankind.  Rationality,  in  the  sense 
of  a  patient  and  open-minded  attempt  to  think  out 
the  general  problems  of  life,  is,  and  perhaps  always 
must  be,  confined  to  a  small  minority  even  of  the  most 
intelligent  populations. 


80 


CHAPTER  III 
SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

AIM  OP  THIS  CHAPTER — THE  SOCIABILITY  OP  CHILDREN — IMAGI- 
NARY CONVERSATION  AND  ITS  SIGNIFICANCE — THE  NATURE  OP 
THE  IMPULSE  TO  COMMUNICATE — THERE  IS  NO  SEPARATION 
BETWEEN  REAL  AND  IMAGINARY  PERSONS — NOR  BETWEEN 
THOUGHT  AND  INTERCOURSE — THE  STUDY  AND  INTERPRETATION 
OP  EXPRESSION  BY  CHILDREN — THE  SYMBOL  OR  SENSUOUS 
NUCLEUS  OF  PERSONAL  IDEAS — PERSONAL  ATMOSPHERE — PER- 
SONAL PHYSIOGNOMY  IN  ART  AND  LITERATURE — IN  THE  IDEA 
OP  SOCIAL  GROUPS — SENTIMENT  IN  PERSONAL  IDEAS — THE 
PERSONAL  IDEA  IS  THE  IMMEDIATE  SOCIAL  REALITY — SOCIETY 
MUST  BE  STUDIED  IN  THE  IMAGINATION — THE  POSSIBLE  REALITY 
OP  INCORPOREAL  PERSONS — THE  MATERIAL  NOTION  OF  PERSON- 
ALITY CONTRASTED  WITH  THE  NOTION  BASED  ON  A  STUDY  OP 
PERSONAL  IDEAS — SELF  AND  OTHER  IN  PERSONAL  IDEAS — 
PERSONAL  OPPOSITION — FURTHER  ILLUSTRATION  AND  DEFENSE 
OF  THE  VIEW  OF  PERSONS  AND  SOCIETY  HERE  SET  FORTH 

In  this  chapter  I  hope  to  show  something  of  the 
origin  and  growth  of  social  ideas  and  feelings  in  the 
mind  of  the  individual,  and  also  something  of  the  na- 
ture of  society  as  we  may  find  it  implied  in  these  ideas 
and  feelings.  If  it  appears  that  the  human  mind  is 
social,  that  society  is  mental,  and  that,  in  short,  so- 
ciety and  the  mind  are  aspects  of  the  same  whole, 
these  conclusions  will  be  no  more  than  a  develop- 
ment of  the  propositions  advanced  in  the  first  chapter. 

To  any  but  a  mother  a  new-born  child  hardly  seems 
human.  It  appears  rather  to  be  a  strange  little  ani- 
mal, wonderful  indeed,  exquisitely  finished  even  to  the 

81 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

finger-nails;  mysterious,  awakening  a  fresh  sense  of 
our  ignorance  of  the  nearest  things  of  life,  but  not 
friendly,  not  lovable.  It  is  only  after  some  days  that 
a  kindly  nature  begins  to  express  itself  and  to  grow 
into  something  that  can  be  sympathized  with  and 
personally  cared  for.  The  earliest  signs  of  it  are 
chiefly  certain  smiles  and  babbling  sounds,  which  are 
a  matter  of  fascinating  observation  to  any  one  inter- 
ested in  the  genesis  of  social  feeling. 

Spasmodic  smiles  or  grimaces  occur  even  during 
the  first  week  of  life,  and  at  first  seem  to  mean  noth- 
ing in  particular.  I  have  watched  the  face  of  an 
infant  a  week  old  while  a  variety  of  expressions, 
smiles,  frowns,  and  so  on,  passed  over  it  in  rapid 
succession:  it  was  as  if  the  child  were  rehearsing  a 
repertory  of  emotional  expression  belonging  to  it  by 
instinct.  So  soon  as  they  can  be  connected  with 
anything  definite  these  rudimentary  smiles  appear  to 
be  a  sign  of  satisfaction.  Mrs.  Moore  says  that  her 
child  smiled  on  the  sixth  day  "when  comfortable,"* 
and  that  this  "never  occurred  when  the  child  was 
known  to  be  in  pain."  Preyer  notes  a  smile  on  the 
face  of  a  sleeping  child,  after  nursing,  on  the  tenth 
day.f  They  soon  begin  to  connect  themselves  quite 
definitely  with  sensible  objects,  such  as  bright  color, 
voices,  movements,  and  fondling.  At  the  same  time 
the  smile  gradually  develops  from  a  grimace  into  a 
subtler,  more  human  expression,  and  Doctor  Perez, 

*  K.  C.  Moore,  The  Mental  Development  of  a  Child,  p.  37. 
t  The  Senses  and  the  Will,  p.  295. 
82 


SOCIABILITY   AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

who  seems  to  have  studied  a  large  number  of  children, 
says  that  all  whom  he  observed  smiled,  when  pleased, 
by  the  time  they  were  two  months  old.*  When  a 
child  is,  say,  five  months  old,  no  doubt  can  remain,  in 
most  cases,  that  the  smile  has  become  an  expression  of 
pleasure  in  the  movements,  sounds,  touches,  and 
general  appearance  of  other  people.  It  would  seem, 
however,  that  personal  feeling  is  not  at  first  clearly 
differentiated  from  pleasures  of  sight,  sound,  and 
touch  of  other  origin,  or  from  animal  satisfactions 
having  no  obvious  cause.  Both  of  my  children  ex- 
pended much  of  their  early  sociability  on  inanimate 
objects,  such  as  a  red  Japanese  screen,  a  swinging 
lamp,  a  bright  door-knob,  an  orange,  and  the  like, 
babbling  and  smiling  at  them  for  many  minutes  at  a 
time;  and  M.,  when  about  three  months  old  and  later, 
would  often  lie  awake  laughing  and  chattering  in  the 
dead  of  night.  The  general  impression  left  upon  one 
is  that  the  early  manifestations  of  sociability  indi- 
cate less  fellow  feeling  than  the  adult  imagination 
likes  to  impute,  but  are  expressions  of  a  pleasure  which 
persons  excite  chiefly  because  they  offer  such  a  variety 
of  stimuli  to  sight,  hearing,  and  touch;  or,  to  put  it 
otherwise,  kindliness,  while  existing  almost  from  the 
first,  is  vague  and  undiscriminating,  has  not  yet  be- 
come fixed  upon  its  proper  objects,  but  flows  out 
upon  all  the  pleasantness  the  child  finds  about  him, 
like  that  of  St.  Francis,  when,  in  his  "Canticle  of  the 
Sun,"  he  addresses  the  sun  and  the  moon,  stars,  winds, 
clouds,  fire,  earth,  and  water,  as  brothers  and  sisters. 
*  See  his  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  13. 
83 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Indeed,  there  is  nothing  about  personal  feeling  which 
sharply  marks  it  off  from  other  feeling;  here  as  else- 
where we  find  no  fences,  but  gradual  transition,  pro- 
gressive differentiation. 

I  do  not  think  that  early  smiles  are  imitative.  I 
observed  both  my  children  carefully  to  discover 
whether  they  smiled  in  response  to  a  smile,  and  ob- 
tained negative  results  when  they  were  under  ten 
months  old.  A  baby  does  not  smile  by  imitation, 
but  because  he  is  pleased;  and  what  pleases  him  in 
the  first  year  of  life  is  usually  some  rather  obvious 
stimulus  to  the  senses.  If  you  wish  a  smile  you 
must  earn  it  by  acceptable  exertion;  it  does  no  good 
to  smirk.  The  belief  that  many  people  seem  to  have 
that  infants  respond  to  smiling  is  possibly  due  to  the 
fact  that  when  a  grown-up  person  appears,  both  he 
and  the  infant  are  likely  to  smile,  each  at  the  other; 
but  although  the  smiles  are  simultaneous  one  need 
not  be  the  cause  of  the  other,  and  many  observations 
lead  me  to  think  that  it  makes  no  difference  to  the 
infant  whether  the  grown-up  person  smiles  or  not. 
He  has  not  yet  learned  to  appreciate  this  rather  subtle 
phenomenon. 

At  this  and  at  all  later  ages  the  delight  in  compan- 
ionship so  evident  in  children  may  be  ascribed  partly 
to  specific  social  emotion  or  sentiment,  and  partly  to 
a  need  of  stimulating  suggestions  to  enable  them  to 
gratify  their  instinct  for  various  sorts  of  mental  and 
physical  activity.  The  influence  of  the  latter  appears 
in  their  marked  preference  for  active  persons,  for 
grown-up  people  who  will  play  with  them — provided 

84 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

they  do  so  with  tact — and  especially  for  other  chil- 
dren. It  is  the  same  throughout  life;  alone  one  is 
like  fireworks  without  a  match:  he  cannot  set  himself 
off,  but  is  a  victim  of  ennui,  the  prisoner  of  some  tire- 
some train  of  thought  that  holds  his  mind  simply 
by  the  absence  of  a  competitor.  A  good  companion 
brings  release  and  fresh  activity,  the  primal  delight 
in  a  fuller  existence.  So  with  the  child:  what  excite- 
ment when  visiting  children  come !  He  shouts,  laughs, 
jumps  about,  produces  his  playthings  and  all  his 
accomplishments.  He  needs  to  express  himself,  and 
a  companion  enables  him  to  do  so.  The  shout  of 
another  boy  in  the  distance  gives  him  the  joy  of  shout- 
ing in  response. 

But  the  need  is  for  something  more  than  muscular 
or  sensory  activities.  There  is  also  a  need  of  feeling, 
an  overflowing  of  personal  emotion  and  sentiment, 
set  free  by  the  act  of  communication.  By  the  time  a 
child  is  a  year  old  the  social  feeling  that  at  first  is 
indistinguishable  from  sensuous  pleasure  has  become 
much  specialized  upon  persons,  and  from  that  time 
onward  to  call  it  forth  by  reciprocation  is  a  chief  aim 
of  his  life.  Perhaps  it  will  not  be  out  of  place  to 
emphasize  this  by  transcribing  two  or  three  notes 
taken  from  life. 

"M.  will  now  [eleven  months  old]  hold  up  something  she 
has  found,  e.g.,  the  petal  of  a  flower,  or  a  little  stick,  demand- 
ing your  attention  to  it  by  grunts  and  squeals.  When  you 
look  and  make  some  motion  or  exclamation  she  smiles." 

"R.  [four  years  old]  talks  all  day  long,  to  real  compan- 
ions, if  they  will  listen,  if  not  to  imaginary  ones.     As  I  sit 

85 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

on  the  steps  this  morning  he  seems  to  wish  me  to  share  his 
every  thought  and  sensation.  He  describes  everything  he 
does,  although  I  can  see  it,  saying,  'Now  I'm  digging  up 
little  stones,'  etc.  I  must  look  at  the  butterfly,  feel  of  the 
fuzz  on  the  clover  stems,  and  try  to  squawk  on  the  dande- 
lion stems.  Meanwhile  he  is  reminded  of  what  happened 
some  other  time,  and  he  gives  me  various  anecdotes  of  what 
he  and  other  people  did  and  said.  He  thinks  aloud.  If  I 
seem  not  to  listen  he  presently  notices  it  and  will  come  up 
and  touch  me,  or  bend  over  and  look  up  into  my  face." 

"R.  [about  the  same  time]  is  hilariously  delighted  and 
excited  when  he  can  get  any  one  to  laugh  or  wonder  with 
him  at  his  pictures,  etc.  He  himself  always  shares  by  an- 
ticipation, and  exaggerates  the  feeling  he  expects  to  pro- 
duce. When  B.  was  calling,  R.,  with  his  usual  desire  to 
entertain  guests,  brought  out  his  pull-book,  in  which  pull- 
ing a  strip  of  pasteboard  transforms  the  picture.  When  he 
prepared  to  work  this  he  was  actually  shaking  with  eager- 
ness— apparently  in  anticipation  of  the  coming  surprise." 

"I  watch  E.  and  R.  [four  and  a  half  years  old]  playing 
McGinty  on  the  couch  and  guessing  what  card  will  turn 
up.  R.  is  in  a  state  of  intense  excitement  which  breaks  out 
in  boisterous  laughter  and  all  sorts  of  movements  of  the 
head  and  limbs.  He  is  full  of  an  emotion  which  has  very 
little  to  do  with  mere  curiosity  or  surprise  relating  to  the 
card." 

I  take  it  that  the  child  has  by  heredity  a  generous 
capacity  and  need  for  social  feeling,  rather  too  vague 
and  plastic  to  be  given  any  specific  name  like  love. 
It  is  not  so  much  any  particular  personal  emotion  or 
sentiment  as  the  undifferentiated  material  of  many: 
perhaps  sociability  is  as  good  a  word  for  it  as  any. 

And  this  material,  like  all  other  instinct,  allies  it- 
self with  social  experience  to  form,  as  time  goes  on, 

86 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL  IDEAS 

a  growing  and  diversifying  body  of  personal  thought, 
in  which  the  phases  of  social  feeling  developed  cor- 
respond, in  some  measure,  to  the  complexity  of  life 
itself.  It  is  a  process  of  organization,  involving  pro- 
gressive differentiation  and  integration,  such  as  we 
see  everywhere  in  nature. 

In  children  and  in  simple-minded  adults,  kindly 
feeling  may  be  very  strong  and  yet  very  naive,  in- 
volving little  insight  into  the  emotional  states  of 
others.  A  child  who  is  extremely  sociable,  bubbling 
over  with  joy  in  companionship,  may  yet  show  a 
total  incomprehension  of  pain  and  a  scant  regard  for 
disapproval  and  punishment  that  does  not  take  the 
form  of  a  cessation  of  intercourse.  In  other  words, 
there  is  a  sociability  that  asks  little  from  others  ex- 
cept bodily  presence  and  an  occasional  sign  of  atten- 
tion, and  often  learns  to  supply  even  these  by  imagi- 
nation. It  seems  nearly  or  quite  independent  of  that 
power  of  interpretation  which  is  the  starting-point  of 
true  sympathy.  While  both  of  my  children  were 
extremely  sociable,  R.  was  not  at  all  sympathetic  in 
the  sense  of  having  quick  insight  into  others'  states 
of  feeling. 

Sociability  in  this  simple  form  is  an  innocent,  un- 
self-conscious  joy,  primary  and  unmoral,  like  all  sim- 
ple emotion.  It  may  shine  with  full  brightness  from 
the  faces  of  idiots  and  imbeciles,  where  it  sometimes 
alternates  with  fear,  rage,  or  lust.  A  visitor  to  an 
institution  where  large  numbers  of  these  classes  are 
collected  will  be  impressed,  as  I  have  been,  with  the 
fact  that  they  are  as  a  rule  amply  endowed  with  those 

87 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

kindly  impulses  which  some  appear  to  look  upon  as 
almost  the  sole  requisite  for  human  welfare.  It  is  a 
singular  and  moving  fact  that  there  is  a  class  of  cases, 
mostly  women,  I  think,  in  whom  kindly  emotion  is  so 
excitable  as  to  be  a  frequent  source  of  hysterical 
spasms,  so  that  it  has  to  be  discouraged  by  frowns 
and  apparent  harshness  on  the  part  of  those  in  charge. 
The  chief  difference  between  normal  people  and  imbe- 
ciles in  this  regard  is  that,  while  the  former  have 
more  or  less  of  this  simple  kindliness  in  them,  social 
emotion  is  also  elaborately  compounded  and  worked 
up  by  the  mind  into  an  indefinite  number  of  complex 
passions  and  sentiments,  corresponding  to  the  rela- 
tions and  functions  of  an  intricate  life. 

When  left  to  themselves  children  continue  the  joys 
of  sociability  by  means  of  an  imaginary  playmate. 
Although  all  must  have  noticed  this  who  have  ob- 
served children  at  all,  only  close  and  constant  observa- 
tion will  enable  one  to  realize  the  extent  to  which  it 
is  carried  on.  It  is  not  an  occasional  practice,  but, 
rather,  a  necessary  form  of  thought,  flowing  from  a 
life  in  which  personal  communication  is  the  chief  in- 
terest and  social  feeling  the  stream  in  which,  like 
boats  on  a  river,  most  other  feelings  float.  Some 
children  appear  to  live  in  personal  imaginations  al- 
most from  the  first  month;  others  occupy  their  minds 
in  early  infancy  mostly  with  solitary  experiments 
upon  blocks,  cards,  and  other  impersonal  objects, 
and  their  thoughts  are  doubtless  filled  with  the  images 
of  these.    But,  in  either  case,  after  a  child  learns  to 

88 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

talk  and  the  social  world  in  all  its  wonder  and  provo- 
cation opens  on  his  mind,  it  floods  his  imagination  so 
that  all  his  thoughts  are  conversations.  He  is  never 
alone.  Sometimes  the  inaudible  interlocutor  is  recog- 
nizable as  the  image  of  a  tangible  playmate,  sometimes 
he  appears  to  be  purely  imaginary.  Of  course  each 
child  has  his  own  peculiarities.  R.,  beginning  when 
about  three  years  of  age,  almost  invariably  talked 
aloud  while  he  was  playing  alone — which,  as  he  was  a 
first  child,  was  very  often  the  case.  Most  commonly 
he  would  use  no  form  of  address  but  "you,"  and  per- 
haps had  no  definite  person  in  mind.  To  listen  to 
him  was  like  hearing  one  at  the  telephone;  though 
occasionally  he  would  give  both  sides  of  the  conver- 
sation. At  times  again  he  would  be  calling  upon  some 
real  name,  Esyllt  or  Dorothy,  or  upon  "Piggy,"  a 
fanciful  person  of  his  own  invention.  Every  thought 
seemed  to  be  spoken  out.  If  his  mother  called  him 
he  would  say,  "I've  got  to  go  in  now."  Once  when 
he  slipped  down  on  the  floor  he  was  heard  to  say, 
"Did  you  tumble  down?     No.     /  did." 

The  main  point  to  note  here  is  that  these  conversa- 
tions are  not  occasional  and  temporary  effusions  of 
the  imagination,  but  are  the  naive  expression  of  a 
socialization  of  the  mind  that  is  to  be  permanent  and 
to  underlie  all  later  thinking.  The  imaginary  dialogue 
passes  beyond  the  thinking  aloud  of  little  children 
into  something  more  elaborate,  reticent,  and  sophisti- 
cated; but  it  never  ceases.  Grown  people,  like  chil- 
dren, are  usually  unconscious  of  these  dialogues;  as 
we  get  older  we  cease,  for  the  most  part,  to  carry  them 

89 


HUMAN   NATURE   AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

on  out  loud,  and  some  of  us  practise  a  good  deal  of 
apparently  solitary  meditation  and  experiment.  But, 
speaking  broadly,  it  is  true  of  adults  as  of  children, 
that  the  mind  lives  in  perpetual  conversation.  It  is 
one  of  those  things  that  we  seldom  notice  just  be- 
cause they  are  so  familiar  and  involuntary;  but  we 
can  perceive  it  if  we  try  to.  If  one  suddenly  stops 
and  takes  note  of  his  thoughts  at  some  time  when  his 
mind  has  been  running  free,  as  when  he  is  busy  with 
some  simple  mechanical  work,  he  will  be  likely  to  find 
them  taking  the  form  of  vague  conversations.  This 
is  particularly  true  when  one  is  somewhat  excited  with 
reference  to  a  social  situation.  If  he  feels  under  accu- 
sation or  suspicion  in  any  way  he  will  probably  find 
himself  making  a  defense,  or  perhaps  a  confession,  to 
an  imaginary  hearer.  A  guilty  man  confesses  "to  get 
the  load  off  his  mind";  that  is  to  say,  the  excitement 
of  his  thought  cannot  stop  there  but  extends  to  the 
connected  impulses  of  expression  and  creates  an  in- 
tense need  to  tell  somebody.  Impulsive  people  often 
talk  out  loud  when  excited,  either  "to  themselves," 
as  we  say  when  we  can  see  no  one  else  present,  or  to 
any  one  whom  they  can  get  to  listen.  Dreams  also 
consist  very  largely  of  imaginary  conversations;  and, 
with  some  people  at  least,  the  mind  runs  in  dialogue 
during  the  half-waking  state  before  going  to  sleep. 
There  are  many  other  familiar  facts  that  bear  the 
same  interpretation— such,  for  instance,  as  that  it  is 
much  easier  for  most  people  to  compose  in  the  form  of 
letters  or  dialogue  than  in  any  other ;  so  that  literature 
of  this  kind  has  been  common  in  all  ages. 

90 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

Goethe,  in  giving  an  account  of  how  he  came  to 
write  Werther  as  a  series  of  letters,  discusses  the 
matter  with  his  usual  perspicuity,  and  lets  us  see  how 
habitually  conversational  was  his  way  of  thinking. 
Speaking  of  himself  in  the  third  person,  he  says: 
"Accustomed  to  pass  his  time  most  pleasantly  in  so- 
ciety, he  changed  even  solitary  thought  into  social 
converse,  and  this  in  the  following  manner:  He  had 
the  habit,  when  he  was  alone,  of  calling  before  his 
mind  any  person  of  his  acquaintance.  This  person  he 
entreated  to  sit  down,  walked  up  and  down  by  him, 
remained  standing  before  him,  and  discoursed  with 
him  on  the  subject  he  had  in  mind.  To  this  the  per- 
son answered  as  occasion  required,  or  by  the  ordinary 
gestures  signified  his  assent  or  dissent — in  which  every 
man  has  something  peculiar  to  himself.  The  speaker 
then  continued  to  carry  out  further  that  which  seemed 
to  please  the  guest,  or  to  condition  and  define  more 
closely  that  of  which  he  disapproved;  and  finally  was 
polite  enough  to  give  up  his  own  notion.  .  .  .  How 
nearly  such  a  dialogue  is  akin  to  a  written  correspon- 
dence is  clear  enough;  only  in  the  latter  one  sees  re- 
turned the  confidence  one  has  bestowed,  while  in  the 
former  one  creates  for  himself  a  confidence  which  is 
new,  ever-changing,  and  unreturned."  *  'Accustomed 
to  pass  his  time  most  pleasantly  in  society,  he  changed 
even  solitary  thought  into  social  converse,"  is  not 
only  a  particular  but  a  general  truth,  more  or  less 
applicable  to  all  thought.  The  fact  is  that  language, 
developed  by  the  race  through  personal  intercourse 
*  Oxenford's  Translation,  vol.  i,  p.  501. 
91 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  imparted  to  the  individual  in  the  same  way,  can 
never  be  dissociated  from  personal  intercourse  in  the 
mind;  and  since  higher  thought  involves  language,  it 
is  always  a  kind  of  imaginary  conversation.  The 
word  and  the  interlocutor  are  correlative  ideas. 

The  impulse  to  communicate  is  not  so  much  a  re- 
sult of  thought  as  it  is  an  inseparable  part  of  it.  They 
are  like  root  and  branch,  two  phases  of  a  common 
growth,  so  that  the  death  of  one  presently  involves 
that  of  the  other.  Psychologists  now  teach  that 
every  thought  involves  an  active  impulse  as  part  of 
its  very  nature;  and  this  impulse,  with  reference  to 
the  more  complex  and  socially  developed  forms  of 
thought,  takes  the  shape  of  a  need  to  talk,  to  write, 
and  so  on;  and  if  none  of  these  is  practicable,  it  ex- 
pends itself  in  a  wholly  imaginary  communication. 

Montaigne,  who  understood  human  nature  as  well, 
perhaps,  as  any  one  who  ever  lived,  remarks:  "There 
is  no  pleasure  to  me  without  communication:  there  is 
not  so  much  as  a  sprightly  thought  comes  into  my 
mind  that  it  does  not  grieve  me  to  have  produced 
alone,  and  that  I  have  no  one  to  tell  it  to."  *  And  it 
was  doubtless  because  he  had  many  such  thoughts 
which  no  one  was  at  hand  to  appreciate,  that  he  took 
to  writing  essays.  The  uncomprehended  of  all  times 
and  peoples  have  kept  diaries  for  the  same  reason.  So, 
in  general,  a  true  creative  impulse  in  literature  or  art 
is,  in  one  aspect,  an  expression  of  this  simple,  childlike 
need  to  think  aloud  or  to  somebody;  to  define  and  vivify 

*See  his  Essay  on  Vanity. 
92 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

thought  by  imparting  it  to  an  imaginary  companion; 
by  developing  that  communicative  element  which  be- 
longs to  its  very  nature,  and  without  which  it  cannot 
live  and  grow.  Many  authors  have  confessed  that 
they  always  think  of  some  person  when  they  write, 
and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  this  is  always  more  or 
less  definitely  the  case,  though  the  writer  himself  may 
not  be  aware  of  it.  Emerson  somewhere  says  that 
"the  man  is  but  half  himself;  the  other  half  is  his 
expression,"  and  this  is  literally  true.  The  man  comes 
to  be  through  some  sort  of  expression,  and  has  no 
higher  existence  apart  from  it;  overt  or  imaginary  it 
takes  place  all  the  time. 

Men  apparently  solitary,  like  Thoreau,  are  often 
the  best  illustrations  of  the  inseparability  of  thought 
and  life  from  communication.  No  sympathetic  reader 
of  his  works,  I  should  say,  can  fail  to  see  that  he  took 
to  the  woods  and  fields  not  because  he  lacked  socia- 
bility, but  precisely  because  his  sensibilities  were  so 
keen  that  he  needed  to  rest  and  protect  them  by  a 
peculiar  mode  of  life,  and  to  express  them  by  the  in- 
direct and  considerate  method  of  literature.  No  man 
ever  labored  more  passionately  to  communicate,  to 
give  and  receive  adequate  expression,  than  he  did. 
This  may  be  read  between  the  lines  in  all  his  works, 
and  is  recorded  in  his  diary.  "I  would  fain  com- 
municate the  wealth  of  my  life  to  men,  would  really 
give  them  what  is  most  precious  in  my  gift.  I  would 
secrete  pearls  with  the  shell-fish  and  lay  up  honey  with 
the  bees  for  them.  I  will  sift  the  sunbeams  for  the 
public  good.     I  know  no  riches  I  would  keep  back. 

93 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

I  have  no  private  good  unless  it  be  my  peculiar  ability 
to  serve  the  public.  This  is  the  only  individual 
property.  Each  one  may  thus  be  innocently  rich.  I 
enclose  and  foster  the  pearl  till  it  is  grown.  I  wish 
to  communicate  those  parts  of  my  life  which  I  would 
gladly  live  again."  *  This  shows,  I  think,  a  just 
notion  of  the  relation  between  the  individual  and 
society,  privacy  and  publicity.  There  is,  in  fact,  a 
great  deal  of  sound  sociology  in  Thoreau. 

Since,  therefore,  the  need  to  impart  is  of  this  pri- 
mary and  essential  character,  we  ought  not  to  look 
upon  it  as  something  separable  from  and  additional 
to  the  need  to  think  or  to  be;  it  is  only  by  impart- 
ing that  one  is  enabled  to  think  or  to  be.  Every 
one,  in  proportion  to  his  natural  vigor,  necessarily 
strives  to  communicate  to  others  that  part  of  his  life 
which  he  is  trying  to  unfold  in  himself.  It  is  a  matter 
of  self-preservation,  because  without  expression  thought 
cannot  live.  Imaginary  conversation — that  is,  con- 
versation carried  on  without  the  stimulus  of  a  visible 
and  audible  response — may  satisfy  the  needs  of  the 
mind  for  a  long  time.  There  is,  indeed,  an  advantage 
to  a  vigorously  constructive  and  yet  impressible  im- 
agination in  restricting  communication;  because  in 
this  way  ideas  are  enabled  to  have  a  clearer  and  more 
independent  development  than  they  could  have  if 
continually  disturbed  by  criticism  or  opposition.  Thus 
artists,  men  of  letters,  and  productive  minds  of  all 
sorts  often  find  it  better  to  keep  their  productions  to 
themselves  until  they  are  fully  matured.  But,  after 
*  Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts,  p.  232. 
94 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

all,  the  response  must  come  sooner  or  later  or  thought 
itself  will  perish.  The  imagination,  in  time,  loses  the 
power  to  create  an  interlocutor  who  is  not  corroborated 
by  any  fresh  experience.  If  the  artist  finds  no  ap- 
preciator  for  his  book  or  picture  he  will  scarcely  be 
able  to  produce  another. 

People  differ  much  in  the  vividness  of  their  imag- 
inative sociability.  The  more  simple,  concrete,  dra- 
matic, their  habit  of  mind  is,  the  more  their  thinking 
is  carried  on  in  terms  of  actual  conversation  with  a 
visible  and  audible  interlocutor.  Women,  as  a  rule, 
probably  do  this  more  vividly  than  men,  the  unlet- 
tered more  vividly  than  those  trained  to  abstract 
thought,  and  the  sort  of  people  we  call  emotional 
more  vividly  than  the  impassive.  Moreover,  the  in- 
terlocutor is  a  very  mutable  person,  and  is  likely  to 
resemble  the  last  strong  character  we  have  been  in 
contact  with.  I  have  noticed,  for  instance,  that 
when  I  take  up  a  book  after  a  person  of  decided  and 
interesting  character  has  been  talking  with  me  I  am 
likely  to  hear  the  words  of  the  book  in  his  voice.  The 
same  is  true  of  opinions,  moral  standards,  and  the 
like,  as  well  as  of  physical  traits.  In  short,  the  inter- 
locutor, who  is  half  of  all  thought  and  life,  is  drawn 
from  the  accessible  environment. 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  there  is  no  separation 
between  real  and  imaginary  persons;  indeed,  to  be 
imagined  is  to  become  real,  in  a  social  sense,  as  I  shall 
presently  point  out.  An  invisible  person  may  easily 
be  more  real  to  an  imaginative  mind  than  a  visible 
one;  sensible  presence  is  not  necessarily  a  matter  of 

95 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  first  importance.  A  person  can  be  real  to  us  only 
in  the  degree  in  which  we  imagine  an  inner  life  which 
exists  in  us,  for  the  time  being,  and  which  we  refer  to 
him.  The  sensible  presence  is  important  chiefly  in 
stimulating  us  to  do  this.  All  real  persons  are  imagi- 
nary in  this  sense.  If,  however,  we  use  imaginary  in 
the  sense  of  illusory,  an  imagination  not  corresponding 
to  fact,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  visible  presence  is  no  bar 
to  illusion.  Thus  I  meet  a  stranger  on  the  steamboat 
who  corners  me  and  tells  me  his  private  history.  I 
care  nothing  for  it,  and  he  half  knows  that  I  do  not; 
he  uses  me  only  as  a  lay  figure  to  sustain  the  agreeable 
illusion  of  sympathy,  and  is  talking  to  an  imaginary 
companion  quite  as  he  might  if  I  were  elsewhere.  So 
likewise  good  manners  are  largely  a  tribute  to  imagi- 
nary companionship,  a  make-believe  of  sympathy 
which  it  is  agreeable  to  accept  as  real,  though  we  may 
know,  when  we  think,  that  it  is  not.  To  conceive  a 
kindly  and  approving  companion  is  something  that 
one  involuntarily  tries  to  do,  in  accordance  with  that 
instinctive  hedonizing  inseparable  from  all  wholesome 
mental  processes,  and  to  assist  in  this  by  at  least  a 
seeming  of  friendly  appreciation  is  properly  regarded 
as  a  part  of  good  breeding.  To  be  always  sincere 
would  be  brutally  to  destroy  this  pleasant  and  mostly 
harmless  figment  of  the  imagination. 

Thus  the  imaginary  companionship  which  a  child 
of  three  or  four  years  so  naively  creates  and  expresses 
is  something  elementary  and  almost  omnipresent  in 
the  thought  of  a  normal  person.  In  fact,  thought 
and  personal  intercourse  may  be  regarded  as  merely 

96 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

aspects  of  the  same  thing:  we  call  it  personal  inter- 
course when  the  suggestions  that  keep  it  going  are 
received  through  faces  or  other  symbols  present  to 
the  senses;  reflection  when  the  personal  suggestions 
come  through  memory  and  are  more  elaborately 
worked  over  in  thought.  But  both  are  mental,  both 
are  personal.  Personal  images,  as  they  are  connected 
with  nearly  all  our  higher  thought  in  its  inception, 
remain  inseparable  from  it  in  memory.  The  mind  is 
not  a  hermit's  cell,  but  a  place  of  hospitality  and 
intercourse.  We  have  no  higher  life  that  is  really 
apart  from  other  people.  It  is  by  imagining  them 
that  our  personality  is  built  up;  to  be  without  the 
power  of  imagining  them  is  to  be  a  low-grade  idiot; 
and  in  the  measure  that  a  mind  is  lacking  in  this 
power  it  is  degenerate.  Apart  from  this  mental  so- 
ciety there  is  no  wisdom,  no  power,  justice,  or  right, 
no  higher  existence  at  all.  The  life  of  the  mind  is 
essentially  a  life  of  intercourse. 

Let  us  now  consider  somewhat  more  carefully  the 
way  in  which  ideas  of  people  grow  up  in  the  mind,  and 
try  to  make  out,  as  nearly  as  we  can,  their  real 
nature  and  significance. 

The  studies  through  which  the  child  learns,  in  time, 
to  interpret  personal  expression  are  very  early  begun. 
On  her  twelfth  day  M.  was  observed  to  get  her  eyes 
upon  her  mother's  face;  and  after  gazing  for  some 
time  at  it  she  seemed  attracted  to  the  eyes,  into  which 
she  looked  quite  steadily.  From  the  end  of  the  first 
month  this  face  study  was  very  frequent  and  long- 

97 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

continued.  Doubtless  any  one  who  notices  infants 
could  multiply  indefinitely  observations  like  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"M.,  in  her  eighth  week,  lies  in  her  mother's  lap  gazing 
up  at  her  face  with  a  frown  of  fixed  and  anxious  attention. 
Evidently  the  play  of  the  eyes  and  lips,  the  flashing  of  the 
teeth,  and  the  wrinkles  of  expression  are  the  object  of  her 
earnest  study.  So  also  the  coaxing  noises  which  are  made  to 
please  her." 

"She  now  [four  months  and  twenty-one  days  old]  seems  to 
fix  her  attention  almost  entirely  upon  the  eyes,  and  will 
stare  at  them  for  a  minute  or  more  with  the  most  intent 
expression." 

The  eye  seems  to  receive  most  notice.  As  Perez 
says:  "The  eye  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and 
attractive  of  objects;  the  vivacity  of  the  pupil  set  in 
its  oval  background  of  white,  its  sparkles,  its  darts 
of  light,  its  tender  looks,  its  liquid  depths,  attract 
and  fascinate  a  young  child.  .  .  ."  *  The  mouth  al- 
so gets  much  attention,  especially  when  in  movement; 
I  have  sometimes  noticed  a  child  who  is  looking  into 
the  eyes  turn  from  them  to  the  mouth  when  the  per- 
son commences  to  talk:  the  flashing  of  the  teeth  then 
adds  to  its  interest.  The  voice  is  also  the  object  of 
close  observation.  The  intentness  with  which  a 
child  listens  to  it,  the  quickness  with  which  he  learns 
to  distinguish  different  voices  and  different  inflec- 
tions of  the  same  voice,  and  the  fact  that  vocal  imi- 
tation precedes  other  sorts,  all  show  this.  It  cannot 
fail  to  strike  the  observer  that  observation  of  these 
traits  is  not  merely  casual,  but  a  strenuous  study, 
*  The  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  77. 
98 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

often  accompanied  by  a  frown  of  earnest  attention. 
The  mind  is  evidently  aroused,  something  important 
is  going  on,  something  conscious,  voluntary,  eager. 
It  would  seem  likely  that  this  something  is  the  storing 
up,  arrangement,  and  interpretation  of  those  images 
of  expression  which  remain  throughout  life  the  start- 
ing-point of  personal  imaginations. 

The  wrinkles  about  the  eyes  and  mouth,  which  are 
perhaps  the  most  expressive  parts  of  the  countenance, 
would  not  be  so  noticeable  at  first  as  the  eyes,  the 
lips,  and  the  teeth,  but  they  are  always  in  the  field 
of  vision,  and  in  time  their  special  significance  as  a 
seat  of  expression  comes  to  be  noticed  and  studied. 
M.  appeared  to  understand  a  smile  sufficiently  to  be 
pleased  by  it  about  the  end  of  the  tenth  month.  The 
first  unequivocal  case  of  smiling  in  response  to  a  smile 
was  noticed  on  the  twenty-sixth  day  of  this  month. 
Even  at  this  age  smiling  is  not  imitative  in  the  sense 
of  being  a  voluntary  repetition  of  the  other's  action, 
but  appears  to  be  merely  an  involuntary  expression 
of  pleasure.  Facial  expression  is  one  of  the  later 
things  to  be  imitated,  for  the  reason,  apparently,  that 
the  little  child  cannot  be  aware  of  the  expression  of 
his  own  countenance  as  he  can  hear  his  own  voice 
or  see  his  own  hands;  and  therefore  does  not  so  soon 
learn  to  control  it  and  to  make  it  a  means  of  voluntary 
imitation.  He  learns  this  only  when  he  comes  to 
study  his  features  in  the  looking-glass.  This  children 
do  as  early  as  the  second  year,  when  they  may  be 
observed  experimenting  before  the  mirror  with  all 
sorts  of  gestures  and  grimaces. 

99 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  interpretation  of  a  smile,  or  of  any  sort  of  facial 
expression,  is  apparently  learned  much  as  other  things 
are.  By  constant  study  of  the  face  from  the  first 
month  the  child  comes,  in  time,  to  associate  the 
wrinkles  that  form  a  smile  with  pleasant  experiences 
— fondling,  coaxing,  offering  of  playthings  or  of  the 
bottle,  and  so  on.  Thus  the  smile  comes  to  be  rec- 
ognized as  a  harbinger  of  pleasure,  and  so  is  greeted 
with  a  smile.  Its  absence,  on  the  other  hand,  is  as- 
sociated with  inattention  and  indifference.  Toward 
the  end  of  the  fifth  month  M.,  on  one  occasion,  seemed 
to  notice  the  change  from  a  smile  to  a  frown,  and 
stopped  smiling  herself.  However,  a  number  of  ob- 
servations taken  in  the  tenth  month  show  that  even 
then  it  was  doubtful  whether  she  could  be  made  to 
smile  merely  by  seeing  some  one  else  do  it;  and,  as  I 
say,  the  first  unequivocal  case  was  noticed  toward  the 
end  of  this  month. 

Such  evidence  as  we  have  from  the  direct  observa- 
tion of  children  does  not  seem  to  me  to  substantiate 
the  opinion  that  we  have  a  definite  instinctive  sen- 
sibility to  facial  expression.  Whatever  hereditary 
element  there  is  I  imagine  to  be  very  vague,  and  in- 
capable of  producing  definite  phenomena  without  the 
aid  of  experience.  I  experimented  upon  my  own  and 
some  other  children  with  frowns,  attempts  at  ferocity, 
and  pictures  of  faces,  as  well  as  with  smiles — in  order 
to  elicit  instinctive  apprehension  of  expression,  but 
during  the  first  year  these  phenomena  seemed  to  pro- 
duce no  definite  effect.  At  about  fifteen  months  M. 
appeared  to  be  dismayed  by  a  savage  expression  as- 

100 


SOCIABILITY   AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

suraed  while  playing  with  her,  and  at  about  the  same 
period  became  very  sensitive  to  frowns.  The  impres- 
sion left  upon  me  was  that  after  a  child  learns  to  expect 
a  smiling  face  as  the  concomitant  of  kindness,  he  is 
puzzled,  troubled,  or  startled  when  it  is  taken  away, 
and  moreover  learns  by  experience  that  frowns  and 
gravity  mean  disapproval  and  opposition.  I  imagine 
that  children  fail  to  understand  any  facial  expression 
that  is  quite  new  to  them.  An  unfamiliar  look,  an 
expression  of  ferocity  for  example,  may  excite  vague 
alarm  simply  because  it  is  strange;  or,  as  is  very  likely 
with  children  used  to  kind  treatment,  this  or  any  other 
contortion  of  the  face  may  be  welcomed  with  a  laugh 
on  the  assumption  that  it  is  some  new  kind  of  play. 
I  feel  sure  that  observation  will  dissipate  the  notion 
of  any  definite  instinctive  capacity  to  interpret  the 
countenance. 

I  might  also  mention,  as  having  some  bearing  upon 
this  question  of  definite  hereditary  ideas,  that  my 
children  did  not  show  that  instinctive  fear  of  animals 
that  some  believe  to  be  implanted  in  us.  R.,  the 
elder,  until  about  three  years  of  age,  delighted  in 
animals,  and  when  taken  to  the  menagerie  regarded 
the  lions  and  tigers  with  the  calmest  interest;  but 
later,  apparently  as  a  result  of  rude  treatment  by  a 
puppy,  became  exceedingly  timid.  M.  has  never,  so 
far  as  I  know,  shown  any  fear  of  any  animal. 

As  regards  sounds,  there  is  no  doubt  of  a  vague 
instinctive  susceptibility,  at  least  to  what  is  harsh- 
sharp,  or  plaintive.  Children  less  than  a  month  old 
will  show  pain  at  such  sounds.     A  harsh  cry,  or  a 

101 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sharp  sound  like  that  of  a  tin  horn,  will  sometimes 
make  them  draw  down  the  mouth  and  cry  even  dur- 
ing the  first  week. 

Darwin  records  that  in  one  of  his  children  sympathy 
"was  clearly  shown  at  six  months  and  eleven  days 
by  his  melancholy  face,  with  the  corners  of  his  mouth 
well  depressed,  when  his  nurse  pretended  to  cry."  * 
Such  manifestations  are  probably  caused  rather  by 
the  plaintive  voice  than  by  facial  expression;  at  any 
rate,  I  have  never  been  able  to  produce  them  by  the 
latter  alone. 

Some  believe  that  young  children  have  an  intuition 
of  personal  character  quicker  and  more  trustworthy 
than  that  of  grown  people.  If  this  were  so  it  would 
be  a  strong  argument  in  favor  of  the  existence  of  a 
congenital  instinct  which  does  not  need  experience 
and  is  impaired  by  it.  My  own  belief  is  that  close 
observation  of  children  under  two  years  of  age  will 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  personal  impressions  are 
developed  by  experience.  Yet  it  is  possibly  true 
that  children  three  years  old  or  more  are  sometimes 
quicker  and  more  acute  judges  of  some  traits,  such  as 
sincerity  and  good  will,  than  grown  people.  In  so 
far  as  it  is  a  fact  it  may  perhaps  be  explained  in  this 
way.  The  faces  that  children  see  and  study  are 
mostly  full  of  the  expression  of  love  and  truth.  Noth- 
ing like  it  occurs  in  later  life,  even  to  the  most  fortu- 
nate. These  images,  we  may  believe,  give  rise  in  the 
child's  mind  to  a  more  or  less  definite  ideal  of  what  a 
true  and  kindly  face  should  be,  and  this  ideal  he  uses 

*  See  his  Biographical  Sketch  of  an  Infant,  Mind,  vol.  2,  p.  289. 
102 


SOCIABILITY   AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

with  great  effect  in  detecting  what  falls  short  of  it. 
He  sees  that  there  is  something  wrong  with  the  false 
smile;  it  does  not  fit  the  image  in  his  mind;  some 
lines  are  not  there,  others  are  exaggerated.  He  does 
not  understand  what  coldness  and  insincerity  are, 
but  their  expression  puzzles  and  alarms  him,  merely 
because  it  is  not  what  he  is  used  to.  The  adult  loses 
this  clear,  simple  ideal  of  love  and  truth,  and  the 
sharp  judgment  that  flows  from  it.  His  perception 
becomes  somewhat  vulgarized  by  a  flood  of  miscel- 
laneous experience,  and  he  sacrifices  childish  spon- 
taneity to  wider  range  and  more  complex  insight, 
valuing  and  studying  many  traits  of  which  the  child 
knows  nothing.  It  will  not  be  seriously  maintained 
that,  on  the  whole,  we  know  people  better  when  we  are 
children  than  we  do  later. 

I  put  forward  these  scanty  observations  for  what 
little  they  may  be  worth,  and  not  as  disproving  the 
existence  of  special  instincts  in  which  Darwin  and 
other  great  observers  have  believed.  I  do  not  main- 
tain that  there  is  no  hereditary  aptitude  to  interpret 
facial  expression — there  must  be  some  sort  of  an  in- 
stinctive basis  to  start  from — but  I  think  that  it  de- 
velops gradually  and  in  indistinguishable  conjunction 
with  knowledge  gained  by  experience. 

Apparently,  then,  voice,  facial  expression,  gesture, 
and  the  like,  which  later  become  the  vehicle  of  per- 
sonal impressions  and  the  sensible  basis  of  sympathy, 
are  attractive  at  first  chiefly  for  their  sensuous  variety 
and  vividness,  very  much  as  other  bright,  moving, 
sounding   things  are   attractive;   and   the   interpreta- 

103 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tion  of  them  comes  gradually  by  the  interworking 
of  instinct  and  observation.  This  interpretation  is 
nothing  other  than  the  growth,  in  connection  with 
these  sensuous  experiences,  of  a  system  of  ideas  that 
we  associate  with  them.  The  interpretation  of  an 
angry  look,  for  instance,  consists  in  the  expectation  of 
angry  words  and  acts,  in  feelings  of  resentment  or 
fear,  and  so  on;  in  short,  it  is  our  whole  mental  reac- 
tion to  this  sign  It  may  consist  in  part  of  sym- 
pathetic states  of  mind,  that  is  of  states  of  mind  that 
we  suppose  the  other  to  experience  also;  but  it  is  not 
confined  to  such.  These  ideas  that  enrich  the  mean- 
ing of  the  symbol — the  resentment  or  fear,  for  in- 
stance— have  all,  no  doubt,  their  roots  in  instinct; 
we  are  born  with  the  crude  raw  material  of  such  feel- 
ings And  it  is  precisely  in  the  act  of  communication, 
in  social  contact  of  some  sort,  that  this  material  grows, 
that  it  gets  the  impulses  that  give  it  further  defini- 
tion, refinement,  organization.  It  is  by  intercourse 
with  others  that  we  expand  our  inner  experience.  In 
other  words,  and  this  is  the  point  of  the  matter,  the 
personal  idea  consists  at  first  and  in  all  later  develop- 
ment, of  a  sensuous  element  or  symbol  with  which  is 
connected  a  more  or  less  complex  body  of  thought  and 
sentiment;  the  whole  social  in  genesis,  formed  by  a 
series  of  communications. 

What  do  we  think  of  when  we  think  of  a  person? 
Is  not  the  nucleus  of  the  thought  an  image  of  the 
sort  just  mentioned,  some  ghost  of  characteristic 
expression?     It   may   be   a   vague   memory   of   lines 

104 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

around  the  mouth  and  eyes,  or  of  other  lines  indicating 
pose,  carriage,  or  gesture;  or  it  may  be  an  echo  of 
some  tone  or  inflection  of  the  voice.  I  am  unable, 
perhaps,  to  call  up  any  distinct  outline  of  the  features 
of  my  best  friend,  of  my  own  mother,  or  my  child; 
but  I  can  see  a  smile,  a  turn  of  the  eyelid,  a  way  of 
standing  or  sitting,  indistinct  and  flitting  glimpses, 
but  potent  to  call  up  those  past  states  of  feeling  of 
which  personal  memories  are  chiefly  formed.  The 
most  real  thing  in  physical  presence  is  not  height, 
nor  breadth,  nor  the  shape  of  the  nose  or  forehead, 
nor  that  of  any  other  comparatively  immobile  part  of 
the  body,  but  it  is  something  in  the  plastic,  expres- 
sive features:  these  are  noticed  and  remembered  be- 
cause they  tell  us  what  we  most  care  to  know. 

The  judgment  of  personal  character  seems  to  take 
place  in  much  the  same  way.  We  estimate  a  man,  I 
think,  by  imagining  what  he  would  do  in  various  situ- 
ations. Experience  supplies  us  with  an  almost  in- 
finite variety  of  images  of  men  in  action,  that  is  of  im- 
pressions of  faces,  tones,  and  the  like,  accompanied 
by  certain  other  elements  making  up  a  situation. 
When  we  wish  to  judge  a  new  face,  voice,  and  form, 
we  unconsciously  ask  ourselves  where  they  would  fit; 
we  try  them  in  various  situations,  and  if  they  fit,  if 
we  can  think  of  them  as  doing  the  things  without  in- 
congruity, we  conclude  that  we  have  that  kind  of  a 
man  to  deal  with.  If  I  can  imagine  a  man  intimi- 
dated, I  do  not  respect  him;  if  I  can  imagine  him 
lying,  I  do  not  trust  him;  if  I  can  see  him  receiving, 
comprehending,    resisting    men    and    disposing    them 

105 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

in  accordance  with  his  own  plans,  I  ascribe  executive 
ability  to  him;  if  I  can  think  of  him  in  his  study  pa- 
tiently working  out  occult  problems,  I  judge  him  to 
be  a  scholar;  and  so  on.  The  symbol  before  us  re- 
minds us  of  some  other  symbol  resembling  it,  and  this 
brings  with  it  a  whole  group  of  ideas  which  constitutes 
our  personal  impression  of  the  new  man.* 

The  power  to  make  these  judgments  is  intuitive, 
imaginative,  not  arrived  at  by  ratiocination,  but  it  is 
dependent  upon  experience.  I  have  no  belief  in  the 
theory,  which  I  have  seen  suggested,  that  we  uncon- 
sciously imitate  other  people's  expression,  and  then 
judge  of  their  character  by  noting  how  we  feel  when 
we  look  like  them.  The  men  of  uncommon  insight 
into  character  are  usually  somewhat  impassive  in 
countenance  and  not  given  to  facial  imitation.  Most 
of  us  become  to  some  extent  judges  of  the  character 
of  dogs,  so  that  we  can  tell  by  the  tone  of  a  dog's 
bark  whether  he  is  a  biting  dog  or  only  a  barking  dog. 
Surely  imitation  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  this; 
we  do  not  imitate  the  dog's  bark  to  learn  whether  he 
is  serious  or  not;  we  observe,  remember,  and  imagine; 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  we  judge  people  in  much  the 
same  way. 

That  which  we  usually  speak  of  as  "personality," 
in  a  somewhat  external  sense,  is  a  sort  of  atmosphere, 
having  its  source  in  habitual  states  of  feeling,  which 
each  of  us  unconsciously  communicates  through  facial 

*  A  good  way  to  interpret  a  man's  face  is  to  ask  one's  self  how 
he  would  look  saying  "I"  in  an  emphatic  manner.  This  seems 
to  help  the  imagination  in  grasping  what  is  most  essential  and 
characteristic  in  him. 

106 


SOCIABILITY   AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

and  vocal  expression.  If  one  is  cheerful,  confident, 
candid,  sympathetic,  he  awakens  similar  feelings  in 
others,  and  so  makes  a  pleasant  and  favorable  im- 
pression; while  gloom,  reserve,  indifference  to  what 
others  are  feeling,  and  the  like,  have  an  opposite  effect. 
We  cannot  assume  or  conceal  these  states  of  feeling 
with  much  success;  the  only  way  to  appear  to  be  a 
certain  sort  of  person  is  actually  to  become  that  sort 
of  person  by  cultivating  the  necessary  habits.  We 
impart  what  we  are  without  effort  or  consciousness, 
and  rarely  impart  anything  else. 

These  visible  and  audible  signs  of  personality,  these 
lines  and  tones  whose  meaning  is  impressed  upon  us 
by  the  intense  and  constant  observation  of  our  child- 
hood, are  also  a  chief  basis  of  the  communication  of 
impressions  in  art  and  literature. 

This  is  evidently  the  case  in  those  arts  which  imi- 
tate the  human  face  and  figure.  Painters  and  illus- 
trators give  the  most  minute  study  to  facial  expres- 
sion, and  suggest  various  sentiments  by  bits  of  light 
and  shade  so  subtle  that  the  uninitiated  cannot  see 
what  or  where  they  are,  although  their  effect  is  every- 
thing as  regards  the  depiction  of  personality.  It  is 
the  failure  to  reproduce  them  that  makes  the  empti- 
ness of  nearly  all  copies  of  famous  painting  or  sculp- 
ture that  represents  the  face.  Perhaps  not  one  person 
in  a  thousand,  comparing  the  "Mona  Lisa"  or  the 
"Beatrice  Cenci"  with  one  of  the  mediocre  copies 
generally  standing  near  them,  can  point  out  where 
the  painter  of  the  latter  has  gone  amiss;  yet  the  dif- 
ference is  like  that  between  life  and  a   wax   image. 

107 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  chief  fame  of  some  painters  rests  upon  their 
power  to  portray  and  suggest  certain  rare  kinds  of 
feeling.  Thus  the  people  of  Fra  Angelico  express  to 
the  eye  the  higher  love,  described  in  words  by  St. 
Paul  and  Thomas  a  Kempis.  It  is  a  distinctly  hu- 
man and  social  sentiment;  his  persons  are  nearly  al- 
ways in  pairs,  and,  in  his  Paradise  for  instance,  almost 
every  face  among  the  blest  is  directed  in  rapture 
toward  some  other  face.  Other  painters,  as  Botticelli 
and  Perugino — alike  in  this  respect  though  not  in 
most — depict  a  more  detached  sort  of  sentiment; 
and  their  people  look  out  of  the  picture  in  isolated 
ecstasy  or  meditation. 

Sculpture  appeals  more  to  reminiscence  of  attitude, 
facial  expression  being  somewhat  subordinate,  though 
here  also  the  difference  between  originals  and  copies 
is  largely  in  the  lines  of  the  eyes  and  mouth,  too  deli- 
cate to  be  reproduced  by  the  mechanical  instruments 
which  copy  broader  outlines  quite  exactly. 

As  to  literature,  it  is  enough  to  recall  the  fact  that 
words  allusive  to  traits  of  facial  expression,  and  espe- 
cially to  the  eye,  are  the  immemorial  and  chosen 
means  of  suggesting  personality.*  To  poetry,  which 
seeks  the  sensuous  nucleus  of  thought,  the  eye  is  very 
generally  the  person;  as  when  Shakespeare  says: 

"When  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes, 
I  all  alone  beweep  my  outcast  state  ..." 

or  Milton: 

"Thy  rapt  soul  sitting  in  thine  eyes." 

'Only  four  words — "heart,"  "love,"  "man,"  "world" — take 
up  more  space  in  the  index  of  " Familiar  Quotations"  than  "eye." 

108 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

Poetry,  however,  usually  refrains  from  minute  de- 
scription of  expression,  a  thing  impossible  in  words, 
and  strikes  for  a  vivid,  if  inexact,  impression,  by  the 
use  of  such  phrases  as  "a  fiery  eye,"  "a  liquid  eye," 
and  "The  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling."  * 

We  also  get  from  every  art  a  personal  impression 
that  does  not  come  from  the  imitation  of  features  and 
tones,  nor  from  a  description  of  these  in  words,  but  is 
the  personality  of  the  author  himself,  subtly  commu- 
nicated by  something  that  we  interpret  as  signs  of  his 
state  of  mind.  When  one  reads  Motley's  histories  he 
gets  a  personal  impression  not  only  of  the  Prince 
of  Orange  or  Alexander  of  Parma,  but  also  of  Mr. 
Motley;  and  the  same  is  true  or  may  be  true  of  any 
work  of  art,  however  "objective"  it  may  be.  What 
we  call  style,  when  we  say  "The  style  is  the  man," 
is  the  equivalent,  in  the  artist's  way  of  doing  things, 
of  those  visible  and  audible  traits  of  the  form  and 
voice  by  which  we  judge  people  who  are  bodily  pres- 
ents "Every  work  of  genius,"  says  John  Burroughs, 
"has  its  own  physiognomy — sad,  cheerful,  frowning, 
yearning,  determined,  meditative."  Just  as  we  are 
glad  of  the  presence  of  certain  forms  and  faces,  be- 
cause of  the  mood  they  put  us  in,  so  we  are  glad  of 

*  On  the  fear  of  (imaginary)  eyes  see  G.  Stanley  Hall's  study 
of  Fear  in  The  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  8,  p.  147. 

t  Two  apparently  opposite  views  are  current  as  to  what  style 
is.  One  regards  it  as  the  distinctive  or  characteristic  in  ex- 
pression, that  which  marks  off  a  writer  or  other  artist  from  all 
the  rest;  according  to  the  other,  style  is  mastery  over  the  common 
medium  of  expression,  as  language  or  the  technique  of  painting 
or  sculpture.  These  are  not  so  inconsistent  as  they  seem. 
Good  style  is  both ;  that  is,  a  significant  personality  expressed  in 
a  workmanlike  manner. 

109 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  physiognomy  of  certain  writers  in  their  books, 
quite  apart  from  the  intellectual  content  of  what  they 
say;  and  this  is  the  subtlest,  most  durable,  most  in- 
dispensable charm  of  all.  Every  lover  of  books  has 
authors  whom  he  reads  over  and  over  again,  whom  he 
cares  for  as  persons  and  not  as  sources  of  information, 
who  are  more  to  him,  possibly,  than  any  person  he 
sees.  He  continually  returns  to  the  cherished  com- 
panion and  feeds  eagerly  upon  his  thought.  It  is 
because  there  is  something  in  the  book  which  he  needs, 
which  awakens  and  directs  trains  of  thought  that  lead 
him  where  he  likes  to  be  led.  The  thing  that  does 
this  is  something  personal  and  hard  to  define;  it  is 
in  the  words  and  yet  not  in  any  definite  information 
that  they  convey.  It  is  rather  an  attitude,  a  way  of 
feeling,  communicated  by  a  style  faithful  to  the 
writer's  mind.  Some  people  find  pleasure  and  profit, 
for  example,  in  perusing  even  the  somewhat  obscure 
and  little  inspired  portions  of  Goethe's  writings,  like 
the  "Campaign  in  France";  it  would  perhaps  be 
impossible  to  tell  why,  further  than  by  saying  that 
they  get  the  feeling  of  something  calm,  free,  and  on- 
ward which  is  Goethe  himself,  and  not  to  be  had  else- 
where. 

And  so  any  one  who  practises  literary  composition, 
even  of  a  pedestrian  sort,  will  find  at  least  one  re- 
ward for  his  pains  in  a  growing  insight  into  the  per- 
sonality of  great  writers.  He  will  come  to  feel  that 
such  a  word  was  chosen  or  such  a  sentence  framed  in 
just  that  way,  under  the  influence  of  such  a  purpose 
or  sentiment,  and  by  putting  these  impressions  to- 

110 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL  IDEAS 

gether,  will  presently  arrive  at  some  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  any  author  whose  character  and 
aims  are  at  all  congenial  with  his  own. 

We  feel  this  more  in  literature  than  in  any  other 
art,  and  more  in  prose  of  an  intimate  sort  than  in  any 
other  kind  of  literature.  The  reason  appears  to  be 
that  writing,  particularly  writing  of  a  familiar  kind, 
like  letters  and  autobiographies,  is  something  which 
we  all  practise  in  one  way  or  another,  and  which  we 
can,  therefore,  interpret;  while  the  methods  of  other 
arts  are  beyond  our  imaginations.  It  is  easy  to  share 
the  spirit  of  Charles  Lamb  writing  his  Letters,  or  of 
Montaigne  dictating  his  Essays,  or  of  Thackeray  dis- 
coursing in  the  first  person  about  his  characters;  be- 
cause they  merely  did  what  all  of  us  do,  only  did  it 
better.  On  the  other  hand,  Michelangelo,  or  Wagner, 
or  Shakespeare — except  in  his  sonnets — remains  for 
most  of  us  personally  remote  and  inconceivable.  But 
a  painter,  or  a  composer,  or  a  sculptor,  or  a  poet,  will 
always  get  an  impression  of  personality,  of  style,  from 
another  artist  of  the  same  sort,  because  his  experience 
enables  him  to  feel  the  subtle  indications  of  mood  and 
method.  Mr.  Frith,  the  painter,  says  in  his  auto- 
biography that  a  picture  "will  betray  the  real  char- 
acter of  its  author;  who,  in  the  unconscious  develop- 
ment of  his  peculiarities,  constantly  presents  to  the 
initiated  signs  by  which  an  infallible  judgment  may 
be  pronounced  on  the  painter's  mind  and  character."  * 
In  fact,  it  is  true  of  any  earnest  career  that  a  man  ex- 
presses his  character  in  his  work,  and  that  another 

*  P.  493. 
Ill 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

man  of  similar  aims  can  read  what  he  expresses.  We 
see  in  General  Grant's  Memoirs,  how  an  able  com- 
mander feels  the  personality  of  an  opponent  in  the 
movements  of  his  armies,  imagines  what  he  will  do 
in  various  exigencies,  and  deals  with  him  accord- 
ingly. 

These  personal  impressions  of  a  writer  or  other 
artist  may  or  may  not  be  accompanied  by  a  vague 
imagination  of  his  visible  appearance.  Some  per- 
sons have  so  strong  a  need  to  think  in  connection 
with  visual  images  that  they  seem  to  form  no  notion 
of  personality  without  involuntarily  imagining  what 
the  person  looks  like;  while  others  can  have  a  strong 
impression  of  feeling  and  purpose  that  seems  not  to 
be  accompanied  by  any  visual  picture.  There  can 
be  no  doubt,  however,  that  sensible  images  of  the 
face,  voice,  etc.,  usually  go  with  personal  ideas.  Our 
earliest  personal  conceptions  grow  up  about  such 
images;  and  they  always  remain  for  most  of  us  the 
principal  means  of  getting  hold  of  other  people.  Nat- 
urally, they  have  about  the  same  relative  place  in 
memory  and  imagination  as  they  do  in  observation. 
Probably,  if  we  could  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  matter, 
it  would  be  found  that  our  impression  of  a  writer  is 
always  accompanied  by  some  idea  of  his  sensible 
appearance,  is  always  associated  with  a  physiognomy, 
even  when  we  are  not  aware  of  it.  Can  any  one,  for 
example,  read  Macaulay  and  think  of  a  soft  and  deli- 
cately inflected  voice?  I  imagine  not:  these  periods 
must  be  connected  with  a  sonorous  and  somewhat 
mechanical  utterance;  the  sort  of  person  that  speaks 

112 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

softly  and  with  delicate  inflections  would  have  written 
otherwise.  On  the  other  hand,  in  reading  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  it  is  impossible,  I  should  say,  not  to 
get  the  impression  of  a  sensitive  and  flexible  speech. 
Such  impressions  are  mostly  vague  and  may  be  in- 
correct, but  for  sympathetic  readers  they  exist  and 
constitute  a  real,  though  subtle,  physiognomy. 

Not  only  the  idea  of  particular  persons  but  that  of 
social  groups  seems  to  have  a  sensible  basis  in  these 
ghosts  of  expression.  The  sentiment  by  which  one's 
family,  club,  college,  state,  or  country  is  realized  in 
his  mind  is  stimulated  by  vague  images,  largely  per- 
sonal. Thus  the  spirit  of  a  college  fraternity  seems 
to  come  back  to  me  through  a  memory  of  the  old 
rooms  and  of  the  faces  of  friends.  The  idea  of  country 
is  a  rich  and  various  one  and  has  connected  with  it 
many  sensuous  symbols — such  as  flags,  music,  and  the 
rhythm  of  patriotic  poetry— that  are  not  directly 
personal;  but  it  is  chiefly  an  idea  of  personal  traits 
that  we  share  and  like,  as  set  over  against  others  that 
are  different  and  repugnant.  We  think  of  America 
as  the  land  of  freedom,  simplicity,  cordiality,  equality, 
and  so  on,  in  antithesis  to  other  countries  which  we 
suppose  to  be  otherwise — and  we  think  of  these  traits 
by  imagining  the  people  that  embody  them.  For 
countless  school-children  patriotism  begins  in  sympa- 
thy with  our  forefathers  in  resistance  to  the  hateful 
oppression  and  arrogance  of  the  British,  and  this  fact 
of  early  training  largely  accounts  for  the  perennial 
popularity  of  the  anti-British  side  in  international 
questions.     Where  the  country  has  a  permanent  ruler 

113 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

to  typify  it  his  image  is  doubtless  a  chief  element  in 
the  patriotic  idea.  On  the  other  hand,  the  impulse 
which  we  feel  to  personify  country,  or  anything  else 
that  awakens  strong  emotion  in  us,  shows  our  imagi- 
nations to  be  so  profoundly  personal  that  deep  feeling 
almost  inevitably  connects  itself  with  a  personal 
image.  In  short,  group  sentiment,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
awakened  by  definite  images,  is  only  a  variety  of  per- 
sonal sentiment.  A  sort  of  vague  agitation,  however, 
is  sometimes  produced  by  mere  numbers.  Thus  pub- 
lic opinion  is  sometimes  thought  of  as  a  vast  imper- 
sonal force,  like  a  great  wind,  though  ordinarily  it  is 
conceived  simply  as  the  opinion  of  particular  persons, 
whose  expressions  or  tones  are  more  or  less  definitely 
imagined. 

In  the  preceding  I  have  considered  the  rise  of  per- 
sonal ideas  chiefly  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  vis- 
ual or  auditory  element  in  them — the  personal  symbol 
or  vehicle  of  communication;  but  of  course  there  is  a 
parallel  growth  in  feeling.  An  infant's  states  of  feel- 
ing may  be  supposed  to  be  nearly  as  crude  as  his  ideas 
of  the  appearance  of  things;  and  the  process  that  gives 
form,  variety,  and  coherence  to  the  latter  does  the 
same  for  the  former.  It  is  precisely  the  act  of  inter- 
course, the  stimulation  of  the  mind  by  a  personal 
symbol,  which  gives  a  formative  impulse  to  the  vague 
mass  of  hereditary  feeling-tendency,  and  this  impulse, 
in  turn,  results  in  a  larger  power  of  interpreting  the 
symbol.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  for  instance,  that 
such  feelings  as  generosity,  respect,  mortification,  emu- 

114 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

lation,  the  sense  of  honor,  and  the  like,  are  an  original 
endowment  of  the  mind.  Like  all  the  finer  and  larger 
mental  life  these  arise  in  conjunction  with  communi- 
cation and  could  not  exist  without  it.  It  is  these 
finer  modes  of  feeling,  these  intricate  branchings  or 
differentiations  of  the  primitive  trunk  of  emotion,  to 
which  the  name  sentiments  is  usually  applied.  Per- 
sonal sentiments  are  correlative  with  personal  symbols, 
the  interpretation  of  the  latter  meaning  nothing  more 
than  that  the  former  are  associated  with  them;  while 
the  sentiments,  in  turn,  cannot  be  felt  except  by  the 
aid  of  the  symbols.  If  I  see  a  face  and  feel  that  here 
is  an  honest  man,  it  means  that  I  have,  in  the  past, 
achieved  through  intercourse  an  idea  of  honest  per- 
sonality, with  the  visual  elements  of  which  the  face 
before  me  has  something  in  common,  so  that  it  calls 
up  this  socially  achieved  sentiment.  And  moreover 
in  knowing  this  honest  man  my  idea  of  honest  per- 
sonality will  be  enlarged  and  corrected  for  future  use. 
Both  the  sentiment  and  its  visual  associations  will  be 
somewhat  different  from  what  they  were. 

Thus  no  personal  sentiment  is  the  exclusive  product 
of  any  one  influence,  but  all  is  of  various  origin  and 
has  a  social  history.  The  more  clearly  one  can  grasp 
this  fact  the  better,  at  least  if  I  am  right  in  supposing 
that  a  whole  system  of  wrong  thinking  results  from 
overlooking  it  and  assuming  that  personal  ideas  are 
separable  and  fragmentary  elements  in  the  mind. 
Of  this  I  shall  say  more  presently.  The  fact  I  mean 
is  that  expressed  by  Shakespeare,  with  reference  to 
love,  or  loving  friendship,  in  his  thirty-first  sonnet: 

115 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts, 
Which  I  by  lacking  have  supposed  dead, 
And  there  reigns  love,  and  all  love's  loving  parts, 
And  all  those  friends  which  I  thought  buried. 

Thou  art  the  grave  where  buried  love  doth  live, 
Hung  with  the  trophies  of  my  lovers  gone, 

Who  all  their  parts  of  me  to  thee  did  give; 
That  due  of  many  now  is  thine  alone: 

Their  images  I  loved  I  view  in  thee, 

And  thou  (all  they)  hast  all  the  all  of  me." 

In  this  sonnet  may  be  discerned,  I  think,  a  true 
theory  of  personal  sentiment,  quite  accordant  with 
the  genetic  point  of  view  of  modern  psychology,  and 
very  important  in  the  understanding  of  social  rela- 
tions. 

Facial  expression,  tone  of  voice,  and  the  like,  the 
sensible  nucleus  of  personal  and  social  ideas,  serve  as 
the  handle,  so  to  speak,  of  such  ideas,  the  principal 
substance  of  which  is  drawn  from  the  region  of  inner 
imagination  and  sentiment.  The  personality  of  a 
friend,  as  it  lives  in  my  mind  and  forms  there  a  part 
of  the  society  in  which  I  live,  is  simply  a  group  or 
system  of  thoughts  associated  with  the  symbols  that 
stand  for  him.  To  think  of  him  is  to  revive  some 
part  of  the  system — to  have  the  old  feeling  along 
with  the  familiar  symbol,  though  perhaps  in  a  new 
connection  with  other  ideas.  The  real  and  intimate 
thing  in  him  is  the  thought  to  which  he  gives  life, 
the  feeling  his  presence  or  memory  has  the  power  to 
suggest.  This  clings  about  the  sensible  imagery,  the 
personal  symbols  already  discussed,  because  the  lat- 
ter have  served  as  bridges  by  which  we  have  entered 

116 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

other  minds  and  therein  enriched  our  own.  We  have 
laid  up  stores,  but  we  always  need  some  help  to  get 
at  them  in  order  that  we  may  use  and  increase  them; 
and  this  help  commonly  consists  in  something  visible 
or  audible,  which  has  been  connected  with  them  in 
the  past  and  now  acts  as  a  key  by  which  they  are  un- 
locked. Thus  the  face  of  a  friend  has  power  over  us 
in  much  the  same  way  as  the  sight  of  a  favorite  book, 
of  the  flag  of  one's  country,  or  the  refrain  of  an  old 
song;  it  starts  a  train  of  thought,  lifts  the  curtain  from 
an  intimate  experience.  And  his  presence  does  not 
consist  in  the  pressure  of  his  flesh  upon  a  neighboring 
chair,  but  in  the  thoughts  clustering  about  some  sym- 
bol of  him,  whether  the  latter  be  his  tangible  person 
or  something  else.  If  a  person  is  more  his  best  self 
in  a  letter  than  in  speech,  as  sometimes  happens,  he 
is  more  truly  present  to  me  in  his  correspondence  than 
when  I  see  and  hear  him.  And  in  most  cases  a  fa- 
vorite writer  is  more  with  us  in  his  book  than  he  ever 
could  have  been  in  the  flesh;  since,  being  a  writer,  he 
is  one  who  has  studied  and  perfected  this  particular 
mode  of  personal  incarnation,  very  likely  to  the  detri- 
ment of  any  other.  I  should  like  as  a  matter  of  curi- 
osity to  see  and  hear  for  a  moment  the  men  whose 
works  I  admire;  but  I  should  hardly  expect  to  find 
further  intercourse  particularly  profitable. 

The  world  of  sentiment  and  imagination,  of  all  finer 
and  warmer  thought,  is  chiefly  a  personal  world — that 
is,  it  is  inextricably  interwoven  with  personal  symbols. 
If  you  try  to  think  of  a  person  you  will  find  that  what 
you  really  think  is  chiefly  sentiments  which  you  con- 

117 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nect  with  his  image;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  try 
to  recall  a  sentiment  you  will  find,  as  a  rule,  that  it 
will  not  come  up  except  along  with  symbols  of  the 
persons  who  have  suggested  it.  To  think  of  love, 
gratitude,  pity,  grief,  honor,  courage,  justice,  and  the 
like,  it  is  necessary  to  think  of  people  by  whom  or 
toward  whom  these  sentiments  may  be  entertained.* 
Thus  justice  may  be  recalled  by  thinking  of  Washing- 
ton, kindness  by  Lincoln,  honor  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
and  so  on.  The  reason  for  this,  as  already  intimated, 
is  that  sentiment  and  imagination  are  generated,  for 
the  most  part,  in  the  life  of  communication,  and  so 
belong  with  personal  images  by  original  and  neces- 
sary association,  having  no  separate  existence  except 
in  our  forms  of  speech.  The  ideas  that  such  words  as 
modesty  and  magnanimity  stand  for  could  never  have 
been  formed  apart  from  social  intercourse,  and  indeed 
are  nothing  other  than  remembered  aspects  of  such 
intercourse.  To  live  this  higher  life,  then,  we  must 
live  with  others,  by  the  aid  of  their  visible  presence, 
by  reading  their  words,  or  by  recalling  in  imagination 
these  or  other  symbols  of  them.  To  lose  our  hold 
upon  them — as,  for  example,  by  long  isolation  or  by 
the  decay  of  the  imagination  in  disease  or  old  age — is 
to  lapse  into  a  life  of  sensation  and  crude  instinct. 

So  far  as  the  study  of  immediate  social  relations  is 
concerned  the  personal  idea  is  the  real  person.     That 

*  With  me,  at  least,  this  is  the  case.  Some  whom  I  have 
consulted  find  that  certain  sentiments — for  instance,  pity — 
may  be  directly  suggested  by  the  word,  without  the  mediation 
of  a  personal  symbol.  This  hardly  affects  the  argument,  as  it 
will  not  be  doubted  that  the  sentiment  was  in  its  inception  associ- 
ated with  a  personal  symbol. 

118 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

is  to  say,  it  is  in  this  alone  that  one  man  exists  for 
another,  and  acts  directly  upon  his  mind.  My  asso- 
ciation with  you  evidently  consists  in  the  relation 
between  my  idea  of  you  and  the  rest  of  my  mind.  If 
there  is  something  in  you  that  is  wholly  beyond  this 
and  makes  no  impression  upon  me  it  has  no  social 
reality  in  this  relation.  The  immediate  social  reality 
is  the  personal  idea;  nothing,  it  would  seem,  could  be 
much  more  obvious  than  this. 

Society,  then,  in  its  immediate  aspect,  is  a  relation 
among  personal  ideas.  In  order  to  have  society  it  is 
evidently  necessary  that  persons  should  get  together 
somewhere;  and  they  get  together  only  as  personal 
ideas  in  the  mind.  Where  else?  What  other  pos- 
sible locus  can  be  assigned  for  the  real  contact  of  per- 
sons, or  in  what  other  form  can  they  come  in  contact 
except  as  impressions  or  ideas  formed  in  this  com- 
mon locus  f  Society  exists  in  my  mind  as  the  con- 
tact and  reciprocal  influence  of  certain  ideas  named 
"I,"  Thomas,  Henry,  Susan,  Bridget,  and  so  on.  It 
exists  in  your  mind  as  a  similar  group,  and  so  in  every 
mind.  Each  person  is  immediately  aware  of  a  par- 
ticular aspect  of  society:  and  so  far  as  he  is  aware  of 
great  social  wholes,  like  a  nation  or  an  epoch,  it  is  by 
embracing  in  this  particular  aspect  ideas  or  sentiments 
which  he  attributes  to  his  countrymen  or  contem- 
poraries in  their  collective  aspect.  In  order  to  see 
this  it  seems  to  me  only  necessary  to  discard  vague 
modes  of  speech  which  have  no  conceptions  back  of 
them  that  will  bear  scrutiny,  and  look  at  the  facts  as 
we  know  them  in  experience. 

119 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Yet  most  of  us,  perhaps,  will  find  it  hard  to  assent 
to  the  view  that  the  social  person  is  a  group  of  senti- 
ments attached  to  some  symbol  or  other  character- 
istic element,  which  keeps  them  together  and  from 
which  the  whole  idea  is  named.  The  reason  for  this 
reluctance  I  take  to  be  that  we  are  accustomed  to  talk 
and  think,  so  far  as  we  do  think  in  this  connection, 
as  if  a  person  were  a  material  rather  than  a  psychical 
fact.  Instead  of  basing  our  sociology  and  ethics  upon 
what  a  man  really  is  as  part  of  our  mental  and  moral 
life,  he  is  vaguely  and  yet  grossly  regarded  as  a  shad- 
owy material  body,  a  lump  of  flesh,  and  not  as  an  ideal 
thing  at  all.  But  surely  it  is  only  common  sense  to 
hold  that  the  social  and  moral  reality  is  that  which 
lives  in  our  imaginations  and  affects  our  motives. 
As  regards  the  physical  it  is  only  the  finer,  more 
plastic  and  mentally  significant  aspects  of  it  that 
imagination  is  concerned  with,  and  with  them  chiefly 
as  a  nucleus  or  centre  of  crystallization  for  sentiment. 
Instead  of  perceiving  this  we  commonly  make  the 
physical  the  dominant  factor,  and  think  of  the  men- 
tal and  moral  only  by  a  vague  analogy  to  it. 

Persons  and  society  must,  then,  be  studied  primarily 
in  the  imagination.  It  is  surely  true,  prima  facie, 
that  the  best  way  of  observing  things  is  that  which  is 
most  direct;  and  I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can  hold 
that  we  know  persons  directly  except  as  imaginative 
ideas  in  the  mind.  These  are  perhaps  the  most  vivid 
things  in  our  experience,  and  as  observable  as  any- 
thing else,  though  it  is  a  kind  of  observation  in  which 

120 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

accuracy  has  not  been  systematically  cultivated.  The 
observation  of  the  physical  aspects,  however  impor- 
tant, is  for  social  purposes  quite  subsidiary:  there  is 
no  way  of  weighing  or  measuring  men  which  throws 
more  than  a  very  dim  side-light  on  their  personality. 
The  physical  factors  most  significant  are  those  elusive 
traits  of  expression  already  discussed,  and  in  the  ob- 
servation and  interpretation  of  these  physical  science 
is  only  indirectly  helpful.  What,  for  instance,  could 
the  most  elaborate  knowledge  of  his  weights  and 
measures,  including  the  anatomy  of  his  brain,  tell  us 
of  the  character  of  Napoleon?  Not  enough,  I  take 
it,  to  distinguish  him  with  certainty  from  an  imbecile. 
Our  real  knowledge  of  him  is  derived  from  reports  of 
his  conversation  and  manner,  from  his  legislation  and 
military  dispositions,  from  the  impression  made  upon 
those  about  him  and  by  them  communicated  to  us, 
from  his  portraits  and  the  like;  all  serving  as  aids  to 
the  imagination  in  forming  a  system  that  we  call  by 
his  name.  I  by  no  means  aim  to  discredit  the  study 
of  man  or  of  society  with  the  aid  of  physical  measure- 
ments, such  as  those  of  psychological  laboratories; 
but  I  think  that  these  methods  are  indirect  and  ancil- 
lary in  their  nature  and  are  most  useful  when  employed 
in  connection  with  a  trained  imagination. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  imaginations  which 
people  have  of  one  another  are  the  solid  facts  of  soci- 
ety, and  that  to  observe  and  interpret  these  must  be  a 
chief  aim  of  sociology.  I  do  not  mean  merely  that 
society  must  be  studied  by  the  imagination — that  is 
true  of  all  investigations  in  their  higher  reaches — but 

121 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  the  object  of  study  is  primarily  an  imaginative 
idea  or  group  of  ideas  in  the  mind,  that  we  have  to 
imagine  imaginations.  The  intimate  grasp  of  any  so- 
cial fact  will  be  found  to  require  that  we  divine  what 
men  think  of  one  another.  Charity,  for  instance,  is 
not  understood  without  imagining  what  ideas  the  giver 
and  recipient  have  of  each  other;  to  grasp  homicide 
we  must,  for  one  thing,  conceive  how  the  offender 
thinks  of  his  victim  and  of  the  administrators  of  the 
law;  the  relation  between  the  employing  and  hand- 
laboring  classes  is  first  of  all  a  matter  of  personal 
attitude  which  we  must  apprehend  by  sympathy  with 
both,  and  so  on.  In  other  words,  we  want  to  get  at 
motives,  and  motives  spring  from  personal  ideas. 
There  is  nothing  particularly  novel  in  this  view;  his- 
torians, for  instance,  have  always  assumed  that  to 
understand  and  interpret  personal  relations  was  their 
main  business;  but  apparently  the  time  is  coming 
when  this  will  have  to  be  done  in  a  more  systematic 
and  penetrating  manner  then  in  the  past.  Whatever 
may  justly  be  urged  against  the  introduction  of  friv- 
olous and  disconnected  "personalities"  into  history, 
the  understanding  of  persons  is  the  aim  of  this  and  all 
other  branches  of  social  study. 

It  is  important  to  face  the  question  of  persons  who 
have  no  corporeal  reality,  as  for  instance  the  dead, 
characters  of  fiction  or  the  drama,  ideas  of  the  gods 
and  the  like.  Are  these  real  people,  members  of  so- 
ciety? I  should  say  that  in  so  far  as  we  imagine  them 
they   are.     Would  it   not  be  absurd   to   deny   social 

122 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

reality  to  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  who  is  so  much 
alive  in  many  minds  and  so  potently  affects  important 
phases  of  thought  and  conduct?  He  is  certainly  more 
real  in  this  practical  sense  than  most  of  us  who  have 
not  yet  lost  our  corporeity,  more  alive,  perhaps,  than 
he  was  before  he  lost  his  own,  because  of  his  wider 
influence.  And  so  Colonel  Newcome,  or  Romola, 
or  Hamlet  is  real  to  the  imaginative  reader  with  the 
realest  kind  of  reality,  the  kind  that  works  directly 
upon  his  personal  character.  And  the  like  is  true  of 
the  conceptions  of  supernatural  beings  handed  down 
by  the  aid  of  tradition  among  all  peoples.  What, 
indeed,  would  society  be,  or  what  would  any  one  of 
us  be,  if  we  associated  only  with  corporeal  persons 
and  insisted  that  no  one  should  enter  our  company 
who  could  not  show  his  power  to  tip  the  scales  and 
cast  a  shadow? 

On  the  other  hand,  a  corporeally  existent  person  is 
not  socially  real  unless  he  is  imagined.  If  the  noble- 
man thinks  of  the  serf  as  a  mere  animal  and  does  not 
attribute  to  him  a  human  way  of  thinking  and  feeling, 
the  latter  is  not  real  to  him  in  the  sense  of  acting 
personally  upon  his  mind  and  conscience.  And  if  a 
man  should  go  into  a  strange  country  and  hide  him- 
self so  completely  that  no  one  knew  he  was  there,  he 
would  evidently  have  no  social  existence  for  the  in- 
habitants. 

In  saying  this  I  hope  I  do  not  seem  to  question 
the  independent  reality  of  persons  or  to  confuse  it 
with  personal  ideas.  The  man  is  one  thing  and  the 
various  ideas  entertained  about  him  are  another;  but 

123 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  latter,  the  personal  idea,  is  the  immediate  social 
reality,  the  thing  in  which  men  exist  for  one  another, 
and  work  directly  upon  one  another's  lives.  Thus 
any  study  of  society  that  is  not  supported  by  a  firm 
grasp  of  personal  ideas  is  empty  and  dead — mere  doc- 
trine and  not  knowledge  at  all. 

I  believe  that  the  vaguely  material  notion  of  per- 
sonality, which  does  not  confront  the  social  fact  at 
all  but  assumes  it  to  be  the  analogue  of  the  physical 
fact,  is  a  main  source  of  fallacious  thinking  about 
ethics,  politics,  and  indeed  every  aspect  of  social  and 
personal  life.  It  seems  to  underlie  all  four  of  the 
ways  of  conceiving  society  and  the  individual  alleged 
in  the  first  chapter  to  be  false.  If  the  person  is  thought 
of  primarily  as  a  separate  material  form,  inhabited  by 
thoughts  and  feelings  conceived  by  analogy  to  be 
equally  separate,  then  the  only  way  of  getting  a  so- 
ciety is  by  adding  on  a  new  principle  of  socialism, 
social  faculty,  altruism,  or  the  like.  But  if  you  start 
with  the  idea  that  the  social  person  is  primarily  a 
fact  in  the  mind,  and  observe  him  there,  you  find  at 
once  that  he  has  no  existence  apart  from  a  mental 
whole  of  which  all  personal  ideas  are  members,  and 
which  is  a  particular  aspect  of  society.  Every  one 
of  these  ideas,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  outcome  of  our 
experience  of  all  the  persons  we  have  known,  and  is 
only  a  special  aspect  of  our  general  idea  of  mankind. 

To  many  people  it  would  seem  mystical  to  say  that 
persons,  as  we  know  them,  are  not  separable  and 
mutually  exclusive,  like  physical  bodies,  so  that  what 

124 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

is  part  of  one  cannot,  be  part  of  another,  but  that 
they  interpenetrate  one  another,  the  same  element 
pertaining  to  different  persons  at  different  times,  or 
even  at  the  same  time:  yet  this  is  a  verifiable  and  not 
very  abstruse  fact.*  The  sentiments  which  make  up 
the  largest  and  most  vivid  part  of  our  idea  of  any 
person  are  not,  as  a  rule,  peculiarly  and  exclusively 
his,  but  each  one  may  be  entertained  in  conjunction 
with  other  persons  also.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  at  the 
point  of  intersection  of  many  personal  ideas,  and  may 
be  reached  through  any  one  of  them.  Not  only 
Philip  Sidney  but  many  other  people  call  up  the  senti- 
ment of  honor,  and  likewise  with  kindness,  magna- 
nimity, and  so  on.  Perhaps  these  sentiments  are  never 
precisely  the  same  in  any  two  cases,  but  they  are 
nearly  enough  alike  to  act  in  about  the  same  manner 
upon  our  motives,  which  is  the  main  thing  from  a 
practical  point  of  view.  Any  kindly  face  will  arouse 
friendly  feeling,  any  suffering  child  awaken  pity,  any 
brave  man  inspire  respect.  A  sense  of  justice,  of 
something  being  due  to  a  man  as  such,  is  potentially 
a  part  of  the  idea  of  every  man  I  know.  All  such 
feelings  are  a  cumulative  product  of  social  experience 
and  do  not  belong  exclusively  to  any  one  personal 

*  This  idea  that  social  persons  are  not  mutually  exclusive  but 
composed  largely  of  common  elements  is  implied  in  Professor 
William  James's  doctrine  of  the  Social  Self  and  set  forth  at  more 
length  in  Professor  James  Mark  Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical 
Interpretations  of  Mental  Development.  Like  other  students 
of  social  psychology  I  have  received  much  instruction  and  even 
more  helpful  provocation  from  the  latter  brilliant  and  original 
work.  To  Professor  James  my  obligation  is  perhaps  greater 
still. 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

symbol.  A  sentiment,  if  we  consider  it  as  something 
in  itself,  is  vaguely,  indeterminately  personal;  it  may 
come  to  life,  with  only  slight  variations,  in  connection 
with  any  one  of  many  symbols;  whether  it  is  referred 
to  one  or  to  another,  or  to  two  or  more  at  once,  is 
determined  by  the  way  one's  thoughts  arrange  them- 
selves, by  the  connection  in  which  the  sentiment  ia 
suggested. 

As  regards  one's  self  in^relation  to  other  people,  I 
shall  have  more  to  say  in  a  later  chapter;  but  I  may 
say  here  that  there  is  no  view  of  the  self,  that  will 
bear  examination,  which  makes  it  altogether  distinct, 
in  our  minds,  from  other  persons.  If  it  includes  the 
whole  mind,  then,  of  course,  it  includes  all  the  per- 
sons we  think  of,  all  the  society  which  lives  in  our 
thoughts.  If  we  confine  it  to  a  certain  part  of  our 
thought  with  which  we  connect  a  distinctive  emotion 
or  sentiment  called  self-feeling,  as  I  prefer  to  do,  it 
still  includes  the  persons  with  whom  we  feel  most 
identified.  Self  and  other  do  not  exist  as  mutually 
exclusive  social  facts,  and  phraseology  which  implies 
that  they  do,  like  the  antithesis  egoism  versus  altru- 
ism, is  open  to  the  objection  of  vagueness,  if  not  of 
falsity.*     It  seems  to  me   that   the   classification   of 

*  I  distinguish,  of  course,  between  egotism,  which  is  an  English 
word  of  long  standing,  and  egoism,  which  was,  I  believe,  some- 
what recently  introduced  by  moralists  to  designate,  in  antithesis 
to  altruism,  certain  theories  or  facts  of  ethics.  I  do  not  object 
to  these  words  as  names  of  theories,  but  as  purporting  to  be  names 
of  facts  of  conduct  I  do,  and  have  in  mind  more  particularly 
their  use  by  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  Principles  of  Psychology 
and  other  works.     As  used  by  Spencer  they  seem  to  me  valid 

126 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

impulses  as  altruistic  and  egoistic,  with  or  without  a 
third  class  called,  perhaps,  ego-altruistic,  is  empty; 
and  I  do  not  see  how  any  other  conclusion  can  result 
from  a  concrete  study  of  the  matter.  There  is  no 
class  of  altruistic  impulses  specifically  different  from 
other  impulses:  all  our  higher,  socially  developed  senti- 
ments are  indeterminately  personal,  and  may  be  asso- 
ciated with  self-feeling,  or  with  whatever  personal 
symbol  may  happen  to  arouse  them.  Those  feelings 
which  are  merely  sensual  and  have  not  been  refined 
into  sentiments  by  communication  and  imagination 
are  not  so  much  egoistic  as  merely  animal:  they  do 
not  pertain  to  social  persons,  either  first  or  second, 
but  belong  in  a  lower  stratum  of  thought.  Sensuality 
is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  social  self.  As  I  shall 
try  to  show  later  we  do  not  think  "I"  except  with 
reference  to  a  complementary  thought  of  other  per- 
sons; it  is  an  idea  developed  by  association  and  com- 
munication. 

from  a  physiological  standpoint  only,  and  fallacious  when  em- 
ployed to  describe  mental,  social,  or  moral  facts.  The  trouble 
is,  as  with  his  whole  system,  that  the  physiological  aspect  of  life 
is  expounded  and  assumed,  apparently,  to  be  the  only  aspect 
that  science  can  consider.  Having  ventured  to  find  fault  with 
Spencer,  I  may  be  allowed  to  add  that  I  have  perhaps  learned  as 
much  from  him  as  from  any  other  writer.  If  only  his  system 
did  not  appear  at  first  quite  so  complete  and  final,  one  might  more 
easily  remain  loyal  to  it  in  spite  of  its  deficiencies.  But  when 
these  latter  begin  to  appear  its  very  completeness  makes  it  seem 
a  sort  of  a  prison-wall  which  one  must  break  down  to  get  out. 

My  views  regarding  Spencer's  sociology  are  given  at  some 
length  in  an  article  published  in  The  American  Journal  of  Soci- 
ology for  September,  1920. 

I  shall  try  to  show  the  nature  of  egotism  and  selfishness  in 
Chapter  VI. 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  egoism -altruism  way  of  speaking  falsifies  the 
facts  at  the  most  vital  point  possible  by  assuming 
that  our  impulses  relating  to  persons  are  separable 
into  two  classes,  the  I  impulses  and  the  You  impulses, 
in  much  the  same  way  that  physical  persons  are  sep- 
arable; whereas  a  primary  fact  throughout  the  range 
of  sentiment  is  a  fusion  of  persons,  so  that  the  impulse 
belongs  not  to  one  or  the  other,  but  precisely  to  the 
common  ground  that  both  occupy,  to  their  intercourse 
or  mingling.  Thus  the  sentiment  of  gratitude  does 
not  pertain  to  me  as  against  you,  nor  to  you  as  against 
me,  but  springs  right  from  our  union,  and  so  with  all 
personal  sentiment.  Special  terms  like  egoism  and 
altruism  are  presumably  introduced  into  moral  dis- 
cussions for  the  more  accurate  naming  of  facts.  But  I 
cannot  discover  the  facts  for  which  these  are  supposed 
to  be  names.  The  more  I  consider  the  matter  the 
more  they  appear  to  be  mere  fictions  of  analogical 
thought.  If  you  have  no  definite  idea  of  personality 
or  self  beyond  the  physical  idea,  you  are  naturally  led 
to  regard  the  higher  phases  of  thought,  which  have 
no  evident  relation  to  the  body,  as  in  some  way  ex- 
ternal to  the  first  person  or  self.  Thus  instead  of 
psychology,  sociology,  or  ethics  we  have  a  mere  shadow 
of  physiology. 

Pity  is  typical  of  the  impulses  ordinarily  called  al- 
truistic; but  if  one  thinks  of  the  question  closely  it 
is  hard  to  see  how  this  adjective  is  especially  appli- 
cable to  it.  Pity  is  not  aroused  exclusively  by  images 
or  symbols  of  other  persons,  as  against  those  of  one's 
self.     If  I  think  of  my  own  body  in  a  pitiable  condi- 

128 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

tion  I  am  perhaps  as  likely  to  feel  pity  as  if  I  think 
of  some  one  else  in  such  a  condition.*  At  any  rate, 
self-pity  is  much  too  common  to  be  ignored.  Even 
if  the  sentiment  were  aroused  only  by  symbols  of  other 
persons  it  would  not  necessarily  be  non-egoistic.  "A 
father  pitieth  his  children,"  but  any  searching  analy- 
sis will  show  that  he  incorporates  the  children  into 
his  own  imaginative  self.  And,  finally,  pity  is  not 
necessarily  moral  or  good,  but  is  often  mere  "self- 
indulgence,"  as  when  it  is  practised  at  the  expense  of 
justice  and  true  sympathy.  A  "wounding  pity,"  to 
use  a  phrase  of  Mr.  Stevenson's,  is  one  of  the  com- 
monest forms  of  objectionable  sentiment.  In  short, 
pity  is  a  sentiment  like  any  other,  having  in  itself  no 
determinate  personality,  as  first  or  second,  and  no 
determinate  moral  character:  personal  reference  and 
moral  rank  depend  upon  the  conditions  under  which 
it  is  suggested.  The  reason  that  it  strikes  us  as  ap- 
propriate to  call  pity  "altruistic"  apparently  is  that 
it  often  leads  directly  and  obviously  to  helpful  practi- 
cal activity,  as  toward  the  poor  or  the  sick.  But 
"altruistic"  is  used  to  imply  something  more  than 
kindly  or  benevolent,  some  radical  psychological  or 
moral  distinction  between  this  sentiment  or  class  of 
sentiments  and  others  called  egoistic,  and  this  dis- 
tinction appears  not  to  exist.  All  social  sentiments 
are  altruistic  in  the  sense  that  they  involve  reference 
to  another  person;  few  are  so  in  the  sense  that  they 

*  Some  may  question  whether  we  can  pity  ourselves  in  this 
way.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  we  avoid  self-pity  only  by  not 
vividly  imagining  ourselves  in  a  piteous  plight;  and  that  if  we 
do  so  imagine  ourselves  the  sentiment  follows  quite  naturally. 

129 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

exclude  the  self.  The  idea  of  a  division  on  this  line 
appears  to  flow  from  a  vague  presumption  that  per- 
sonal ideas  must  have  a  separateness  answering  to 
that  of  material  bodies. 

I  do  not  mean  to  deny  or  depreciate  the  fact  of 
personal  opposition;  it  is  real  and  most  important, 
though  it  does  not  rest  upon  any  such  essential  and, 
as  it  were,  material  separateness  as  the  common  way 
of  thinking  implies.  At  a  given  moment  personal 
symbols  may  stand  for  different  and  opposing  ten- 
dencies; thus  the  missionary  may  be  urging  me  to 
contribute  to  his  cause,  and,  if  he  is  skilful,  the  im- 
pulses he  awakens  will  move  me  in  that  direction; 
but  if  I  think  of  my  wife  and  children  and  the  sum- 
mer outing  I  had  planned  to  give  them  from  my  sav- 
ings, an  opposite  impulse  appears.  And  in  all  such 
cases  the  very  fact  of  opposition  and  the  attention 
thereby  drawn  to  the  conflicting  impulses  gives  empha- 
sis to  them,  so  that  common  elements  are  overlooked 
and  the  persons  in  the  imagination  seem  separate 
and  exclusive. 

In  such  cases,  however,  the  harmonizing  or  moral- 
izing of  the  situation  consists  precisely  in  evoking  or 
appealing  to  the  common  element  in  the  apparently 
conflicting  personalities,  that  is  to  some  sentiment  of 
justice  or  right.  Thus  I  may  say  to  myself,  "I  can 
afford  a  dollar,  but  ought  not,  out  of  consideration 
for  my  family,  to  give  more,"  and  may  be  able  to 
imagine  all  parties  accepting  this  view  of  the  case. 

Opposition  between  one's  self  and  some  one  else  is 
also  a   very  real   thing;   but  this  opposition,   instead 

130 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL   IDEAS 

of  coming  from  a  separateness  like  that  of  material 
bodies,  is,  on  the  contrary,  dependent  upon  a  measure 
of  community  between  one's  self  and  the  disturbing 
other,  so  that  the  hostility  between  one's  self  and  a 
social  person  may  always  be  described  as  hostile 
sympathy.  And  the  sentiments  connected  with  op- 
position, like  resentment,  pertain  neither  to  myself, 
considered  separately,  nor  to  the  symbol  of  the  other 
person,  but  to  ideas  including  both.  I  shall  discuss 
these  matters  at  more  length  in  subsequent  chapters; 
the  main  thing  here  is  to  note  that  personal  oppo- 
sition does  not  involve  mechanical  separateness,  but 
arises  from  the  emphasis  of  inconsistent  elements  in 
ideas  having  much  in  common. 

The  relations  to  one  another  and  to  the  mind  of  the 
various  persons  one  thinks  of  might  be  rudely  pictured 
in  some  such  way  as  this.  Suppose  we  conceive  the 
mind  as  a  vast  wall  covered  with  electric-light  bulbs, 
each  of  which  represents  a  possible  thought  or  impulse 
whose  presence  in  our  consciousness  may  be  indicated 
by  the  lighting  up  of  the  bulb.  Now  each  of  the 
persons  we  know  is  represented  in  such  a  scheme,  not 
by  a  particular  area  of  the  wall  set  apart  for  him,  but 
by  a  system  of  hidden  connections  among  the  bulbs 
which  causes  certain  combinations  of  them  to  be  lit 
up  when  his  characteristic  symbol  is  suggested.  If 
something  presses  the  button  corresponding  to  my 
friend  A,  a  peculiarly  shaped  figure  appears  upon  the 
wall;  when  that  is  released  and  B's  button  is  pressed 
another  figure  appears,  including  perhaps  many  of 
the  same  lights,  yet  unique  as  a  whole  though  not  in 

131 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

its  parts;  and  so  on  with  as  many  people  as  you  please. 
It  should  also  be  considered  that  we  usually  think  of 
a  person  in  relation  to  some  particular  social  situation, 
and  that  those  phases  of  him  that  bear  on  this  situation 
are  the  only  ones  vividly  conceived.  To  recall  some 
one  is  commonly  to  imagine  how  this  or  that  idea 
would  strike  him,  what  he  would  say  or  do  in  our 
place,  and  so  on.  Accordingly,  only  some  part,  some 
appropriate  and  characteristic  part,  of  the  whole 
figure  that  might  be  lighted  up  in  connection  with  a 
man's  symbol,  is  actually  illuminated. 

To  introduce  the  self  into  this  illustration  we  might 
say  that  the  lights  near  the  centre  of  the  wall  were  of 
a  particular  color — say  red — which  faded,  not  too 
abruptly,  into  white  toward  the  edges.  This  red 
would  represent  self-feeling,  and  other  persons  would 
be  more  or  less  colored  by  it  according  as  they  were 
or  were  not  intimately  identified  with  our  cherished 
activities.  In  a  mother's  mind,  for  instance,  her  child 
would  lie  altogether  in  the  inmost  and  reddest  area. 
Thus  the  same  sentiment  may  belong  to  the  self  and 
to  several  other  persons  at  the  same  time.  If  a  man 
and  his  family  are  suffering  from  his  being  thrown  out 
of  work,  his  apprehension  and  resentment  will  be  part 
of  his  idea  of  each  member  of  his  family,  as  well  as 
part  of  his  self-idea  and  of  the  idea  of  people  whom  he 
thinks  to  blame. 

I  trust  it  will  be  plain  that  there  is  nothing  fan- 
tastic, unreal,  or  impractical  about  this  way  of  con- 
ceiving people,  that  is  by  observing  them  as  facts  of 
the    imagination.     On    the    contrary,    the    fantastic, 

132 


SOCIABILITY  AND  PERSONAL  IDEAS 

unreal,  and  practically  pernicious  way  is  the  ordinary 
and  traditional  one  of  speculating  upon  them  as  shad- 
owy bodies,  without  any  real  observation  of  them  as 
mental  facts.  It  is  the  man  as  imagined  that  we  love 
or  hate,  imitate,  or  avoid,  that  helps  or  harms  us,  that 
moulds  our  wills  and  our  careers.  What  is  it  that 
makes  a  person  real  to  us;  is  it  material  contact  or 
contact  in  the  imagination?  Suppose,  for  instance, 
that  on  suddenly  turning  a  corner  I  collide  with  one 
coming  from  the  opposite  direction:  I  receive  a  slight 
bruise,  have  the  breath  knocked  out  of  me,  exchange 
conventional  apologies,  and  immediately  forget  the 
incident.  It  takes  no  intimate  hold  upon  me,  means 
nothing  except  a  slight  and  temporary  disturbance  in 
the  animal  processes.  Now  suppose,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  I  take  up  Froude's  Caesar,  and  presently 
find  myself,  under  the  guidance  of  that  skilful  writer, 
imagining  a  hero  whose  body  long  ago  turned  to  clay. 
He  is  alive  in  my  thought:  there  is  perhaps  some  no- 
tion of  his  visible  presence,  and  along  with  this  the 
awakening  of  sentiments  of  audacity,  magnanimity, 
and  the  like,  that  glow  with  intense  life,  consume  my 
energy,  make  me  resolve  to  be  like  Caesar  in  some 
respect,  and  cause  me  to  see  right  and  wrong  and 
other  great  questions  as  I  conceive  he  would  have  seen 
them.  Very  possibly  he  keeps  me  awake  after  I  go 
to  bed — every  boy  has  lain  awake  thinking  of  book 
people.  My  whole  after  life  will  be  considerably 
affected  by  this  experience,  and  yet  this  is  a  contact 
that  takes  place  only  in  the  imagination.  Even  as 
regards    the    physical    organism    it   is    immeasurably 

133 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

more  important,  as  a  rule,  than  the  material  collision. 
A  blow  in  the  face,  if  accidental  and  so  not  disturbing 
to  the  imagination,  affects  the  nerves,  the  heart,  and 
the  digestion  very  little,  but  an  injurious  word  or  look 
may  cause  sleepless  nights,  dyspepsia,  or  palpitation. 
It  is,  then,  the  personal  idea,  the  man  in  the  imagina- 
tion, the  real  man  of  power  and  fruits,  that  we  need 
primarily  to  consider,  and  he  appears  to  be  some- 
what different  from  the  rather  conventional  and  ma- 
terial man  of  traditionary  social  philosophy. 

According  to  this  view  of  the  matter  society  is 
simply  the  collective  aspect  of  personal  thought. 
Each  man's  imagination,  regarded  as  a  mass  of  per- 
sonal impressions  worked  up  into  a  living,  growing 
whole,  is  a  special  phase  of  society;  and  Mind  or 
Imagination  as  a  whole,  that  is  human  thought  con- 
sidered in  the  largest  way  as  having  a  growth  and 
organization  extending  throughout  the  ages,  is  the 
locus  of  society  in  the  widest  possible  sense. 

It  may  be  objected  that  society  in  this  sense  has 
no  definite  limits,  but  seems  to  include  the  whole 
range  of  experience.  That  is  to  say,  the  mind  is  all 
one  growth,  and  we  cannot  draw  any  distinct  line 
between  personal  thought  and  other  thought.  There 
is  probably  no  such  thing  as  an  idea  that  is  wholly 
independent  of  minds  other  than  that  in  which  it 
exists;  through  heredity,  if  not  through  communica- 
tion, all  is  connected  with  the  general  life,  and  so  in 
some  sense  social.  What  are  spoken  of  above  as 
personal  ideas  are  merely  those  in  which  the  connec- 
tion with  other  persons  is  most  direct  and  apparent. 

134 


SOCIABILITY  AND   PERSONAL  IDEAS 

This  objection,  however,  applies  to  any  way  of  defin- 
ing society,  and  those  who  take  the  material  stand- 
point are  obliged  to  consider  whether  houses,  factories, 
domestic  animals,  tilled  land,  and  so  on  are  not  really 
parts  of  the  social  order.  The  truth,  of  course,  is 
that  all  life  hangs  together  in  such  a  manner  that 
any  attempt  to  delimit  a  part  of  it  is  artificial.  So- 
ciety is  rather  a  phase  of  life  than  a  thing  by  itself; 
it  is  life  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  personal  in- 
tercourse. And  personal  intercourse  may  be  considered 
either  in  its  primary  aspects,  such  as  are  treated  in  this 
book,  or  in  secondary  aspects,  such  as  groups,  institu- 
tions, or  processes.  Sociology,  I  suppose,  is  the  science 
of  these  things. 


135 


CHAPTER  IV 

SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING  AS  AN  ASPECT 
OF  SOCIETY 

THE  MEANING  OP  SYMPATHY  AS  HERE  USED — ITS  RELATION  TO 
THOUGHT,  SENTIMENT,  AND  SOCIAL  EXPERIENCE — THE  RANGE 
OF  SYMPATHY  IS  A  MEASURE  OF  PERSONALITY,  6.  g.,  OF  POWER, 
OP  MORAL  RANK,  AND  OF  SANITY — A  MAN'S  SYMPATHIES  RE- 
FLECT THE  STATE  OF  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER — SPECIALIZATION  AND 
BREADTH — SYMPATHY  REFLECTS  SOCIAL  PROCESS  IN  THE 
MINGLING  OF  LIKENESS  WITH  DIFFERENCE — ALSO  IN  THAT  IT 
IS  A  PROCESS  OF  SELECTION  GUIDED  BY  FEELING — THE  MEAN- 
ING OF  LOVE  IN  SOCIAL  DISCUSSION — LOVE  IN  RELATION  TO 
SELF — THE  STUDY  OF  SYMPATHY  REVEALS  THE  VITAL  UNITY 
OF  HUMAN   LIFE 

The  growth  of  personal  ideas  through  intercourse, 
described  in  the  preceding  chapter,  implies  a  grow- 
ing power  of  sympathy,  of  entering  into  and  sharing 
the  minds  of  other  persons.  To  converse  with  an- 
other, through  words,  looks,  or  other  symbols,  means 
to  have  more  or  less  understanding  or  communion 
with  him,  to  get  on  common  ground  and  partake  of 
his  ideas  and  sentiments.  If  one  uses  sympathy  in 
this  connection — and  it  is  perhaps  the  most  available 
word — one  has  to  bear  in  mind  that  it  denotes  the 
sharing  of  any  mental  state  that  can  be  communicated, 
and  has  not  the  special  implication  of  pity  or  other 
"tender  emotion"  that  it  very  commonly  carries  in 
ordinary   speech.*    This   emotionally   colorless   usage 

*  Sympathy  in  the  sense  of  compassion  is  a  specific  emotion  or 
sentiment,  and  has  nothing  necessarily  in  common  with  sympathy 
in  the  sense  of  communion.     It  might  be  thought,  perhaps,  that 

136 


SYMPATHY  OR   UNDERSTANDING 

is,  however,  perfectly  legitimate,  and  is,  I  think,  more 
common  in  classical  English  literature  than  any  other. 
Thus  Shakespeare,  who  uses  sympathy  five  times,  if 
we  may  trust  the  Shakespeare  Phrase  Book,  never 
means  by  it  the  particular  emotion  of  compassion, 
but  either  the  sharing  of  a  mental  state,  as  when  he 
speaks  of  "sympathy  in  choice,"  or  mere  resemblance, 
as  when  Iago  mentions  the  lack  of  "sympathy  in 
years,  manners,  and  beauties"  between  Othello  and 


compassion  was  one  form  of  the  sharing  of  feeling;  but  this  ap- 
pears not  to  be  the  case.  The  sharing  of  painful  feeling  may 
precede  and  cause  compassion,  but  is  not  the  same  with  it. 
When  I  feel  sorry  for  a  man  in  disgrace,  it  is,  no  doubt,  in  most 
cases,  because  I  have  imaginatively  partaken  of  his  humiliation; 
but  my  compassion  for  him  is  not  the  thing  that  is  shared,  but 
is  something  additional,  a  comment  on  the  shared  feeling.  I 
may  imagine  how  a  suffering  man  feels — sympathize  with  him 
in  that  sense — and  be  moved  not  to  pity  but  to  disgust,  contempt, 
or  perhaps  admiration.  Our  feeling  makes  all  sorts  of  comments 
on  the  imagined  feeling  of  others.  Moreover  it  is  not  essential 
that  there  should  be  any  real  understanding  in  order  that  com- 
passion may  be  felt.  One  may  compassionate  a  worm  squirming 
on  a  hook,  or  a  fish,  or  even  a  tree.  As  between  persons  pity, 
while  often  a  helpful  and  healing  emotion,  leading  to  kindly 
acts,  is  sometimes  indicative  of  the  absence  of  true  sympathy. 
We  all  wish  to  be  understood,  at  least  in  what  we  regard  as  our 
better  aspects,  but  few  of  us  wish  to  be  pitied  except  in  moments 
of  weakness  and  discouragement.  To  accept  pity  is  to  confess 
that  one  falls  below  the  healthy  standard  of  vigor  and  self-help. 
While  a  real  understanding  of  our  deeper  thought  is  rare  and 
precious,  pity  is  usually  cheap,  many  people  finding  an  easy 
pleasure  in  indulging  it,  as  one  may  in  the  indulgence  of  grief, 
resentment,  or  almost  any  emotion.  It  is  often  felt  by  the  per- 
son who  is  its  object  as  a  sort  of  an  insult,  a  back-handed  thrust 
at  self-respect,  the  unkindest  cut  of  all.  For  instance,  as  be- 
tween richer  and  poorer  classes  in  a  free  country  a  mutually 
respecting  antagonism  is  much  healthier  than  pity  on  the  one 
hand  and  dependence  on  the  other,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  next 
best  thing  to  fraternal  feeling. 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Desdemona.  This  latter  sense  is  also  one  which 
must  be  excluded  in  our  use  of  the  word,  since  what 
is  here  meant  is  an  active  process  of  mental  assimi- 
lation, not  mere  likeness. 

In  this  chapter  sympathy,  in  the  sense  of  under- 
standing or  personal  insight,  will  be  considered  chiefly 
with  a  view  to  showing  something  of  its  nature  as  a 
phase  or  member  of  the  general  life  of  mankind. 

The  content  of  it,  the  matter  understood,  is  chiefly 
thought  and  sentiment,  in  distinction  from  mere 
sensation  or  crude  emotion.  I  do  not  venture  to 
say  that  these  latter  cannot  be  shared,  but  certainly 
they  play  a  relatively  small  part  in  the  communicative 
life.  Thus  although  to  get  one's  finger  pinched  is  a 
common  experience,  it  is  impossible,  to  me  at  least, 
to  recall  the  sensation  when  another  person  has  his 
finger  pinched.  So  when  we  say  that  we  feel  sym- 
pathy for  a  person  who  has  a  headache,  we  mean  that 
we  pity  him,  not  that  we  share  the  headache.  There 
is  little  true  communication  of  physical  pain,  or  any- 
thing of  that  simple  sort.  The  reason  appears  to  be 
that  as  ideas  of  this  kind  are  due  to  mere  physical 
contacts,  or  other  simple  stimuli,  in  the  first  instance, 
they  are  and  remain  detached  and  isolated  in  the 
mind,  so  that  they  are  unlikely  to  be  recalled  except 
by  some  sensation  of  the  sort  originally  associated 
with  them.  If  they  become  objects  of  thought  and 
conversation,  as  is  likely  to  be  the  case  when  they  are 
agreeable,  they  are  by  that  very  process  refined  into 
sentiments.     Thus  when  the  pleasures  of  the  table  are 

138 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

discussed  the  thing  communicated  is  hardly  the  sen- 
sation of  taste  but  something  much  subtler,  although 
partly  based  upon  that.  Thought  and  sentiment  are 
from  the  first  parts  or  aspects  of  highly  complex  and 
imaginative  personal  ideas,  and  of  course  may  be 
reached  by  anything  which  recalls  any  part  of  those 
ideas.  They  are  aroused  by  personal  intercourse  be- 
cause in  their  origin  they  are  connected  with  personal 
symbols.  The  sharing  of  a  sentiment]  ordinarily 
comes  to  pass  by  our  perceiving  one  of  these  symbols 
or  traits  of  expression  which  has  belonged  with  the 
sentiment  in  the  past  and  now  brings  it  back.  And 
likewise  with  thought:  it  is  communicated  by  words, 
and  these  are  freighted  with  the  net  result  of  centu- 
ries of  intercourse.  Both  spring  from  the  general  life 
of  society  and  cannot  be  separated  from  that  life, 
nor  it  from  them. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred  that  we  must  go  through 
the  same  visible  and  tangible  experiences  as  other 
people  before  we  can  sympathize  with  them.  On  the 
contrary,  there  is  only  an  indirect  and  uncertain  con- 
nection between  one's  sympathies  and  the  obvious 
events — such  as  the  death  of  friends,  success  or  fail- 
ure in  business,  travels,  and  the  like — that  one  has 
gone  through.  Social  experience  is  a  matter  of  im- 
aginative, not  of  material,  contacts;  and  there  are  so 
many  aids  to  the  imagination  that  little  can  be  judged 
as  to  one's  experience  by  the  merely  external  course 
of  his  life.  An  imaginative  student  of  a  few  people 
and  of  books  often  has  many  times  the  range  of  com- 
prehension that  the  most  varied  career  can  give  to 

139 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  duller  mind;  and  a  man  of  genius,  like  Shakespeare, 
may  cover  almost  the  whole  range  of  human  senti- 
ment in  his  time,  not  by  miracle,  but  by  a  marvellous 
vigor  and  refinement  of  imagination.  The  idea  that 
seeing  life  means  going  from  place  to  place  and  doing 
a  great  variety  of  obvious  things  is  an  illusion  natural 
to  dull  minds. 

One's  range  of  sympathy  is  a  measure  of  his  per- 
sonality, indicating  how  much  or  how  little  of  a  man 
he  is.  It  is  in  no  way  a  special  faculty,  but  a  func- 
tion of  the  whole  mind  to  which  every  special  faculty 
contributes,  so  that  what  a  person  is  and  what  he 
can  understand  or  enter  into  through  the  life  of  others 
are  very  much  the  same  thing.  We  often  hear  peo- 
ple described  as  sympathetic  who  have  little  mental 
power,  but  are  of  a  sensitive,  impressionable,  quickly 
responsive  type  of  mind.  The  sympathy  of  such  a 
mind  always  has  some  defect  corresponding  to  its  lack 
of  character  and  of  constructive  force.  A  strong, 
deep  understanding  of  other  people  implies  mental 
energy  and  stability;  it  is  a  work  of  persistent,  cumu- 
lative imagination  which  may  be  associated  with  a 
comparative  slowness  of  direct  sensibility.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  often  see  the  union  of  a  quick  sensi- 
tiveness to  immediate  impressions  with  an  inability  to 
comprehend  what  has  to  be  reached  by  reason  or  con- 
structive imagination. 

Sympathy  is  a  requisite  to  social  power.  Only  in 
so  far  as  a  man  understands  other  people  and  thus 
enters  into  the  life  around  him  has  he  any  effective 

140 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

existence;  the  less  he  has  of  this  the  more  he  is  a  mere 
animal,  not  truly  in  contact  with  human  life.  And 
if  he  is  not  in  contact  with  it  he  can  of  course  have 
no  power  over  it.  This  is  a  principle  of  familiar 
application,  and  yet  one  that  is  often  overlooked, 
practical  men  having,  perhaps,  a  better  grasp  of  it 
than  theorists.  It  is  well  understood  by  men  of  the 
world  that  effectiveness  depends  at  least  as  much 
upon  address,  savoir-faire,  tact,  and  the  like,  involv- 
ing sympathetic  insight  into  the  minds  of  other  peo- 
ple, as  upon  any  more  particular  faculties.  There  is 
nothing  more  practical  than  social  imagination;  to 
lack  it  is  to  lack  everything.  All  classes  of  persons 
need  it — the  mechanic,  the  farmer,  and  the  tradesman, 
as  well  as  the  lawyer,  the  clergyman,  the  railway 
president,  the  politician,  the  philanthropist,  and  the 
poet.  Every  year  thousands  of  young  men  are  pre- 
ferred to  other  thousands  and  given  positions  of  more 
responsibility  largely  because  they  are  seen  to  have  a 
power  of  personal  insight  which  promises  efficiency 
and  growth.  Without  "caliber,"  which  means  chiefly 
a  good  imagination,  there  is  no  getting  on  much  in 
the  world.  The  strong  men  of  our  society,  however 
much  we  may  disapprove  of  the  particular  direction 
in  which  their  sympathy  is  sometimes  developed  or 
the  ends  their  power  is  made  to  serve,  are  very  human 
men,  not  at  all  the  abnormal  creatures  they  are  some- 
times asserted  to  be.  I  have  met  a  fair  number  of 
such  men,  and  they  have  generally  appeared,  each  in 
his  own  way,  to  be  persons  of  a  certain  scope  and 
breadth  that  marked  them  off  from  the  majority. 

141 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

A  person  of  definite  character  and  purpose  who 
comprehends  our  way  of  thought  is  sure  to  exert 
power  over  us.  He  cannot  altogether  be  resisted;  be- 
cause, if  he  understands  us,  he  can  make  us  under- 
stand him,  through  the  word,  the  look,  or  other  symbol, 
which  both  of  us  connect  with  the  common  sentiment 
or  idea;  and  thus  by  communicating  an  impulse  he  can 
move  the  will.  Sympathetic  influence  enters  into  our 
sj'stem  of  thought  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  affects 
our  conduct  as  surely  as  water  affects  the  growth  of 
a  plant.  The  kindred  spirit  can  turn  on  a  system  of 
lights,  to  recur  to  the  image  of  the  last  chapter,  and 
so  transform  the  mental  illumination.  This  is  the 
nature  of  all  authority  and  leadership,  as  I  shall  try 
to  explain  more  fully  in  another  chapter. 

Again,  sympathy,  in  the  broad  sense  in  which  it  is 
here  used,  underlies  also  the  moral  rank  of  a  man  and 
goes  to  fix  our  estimate  of  his  justice  and  goodness. 
The  just,  the  good,  or  the  right  under  any  name  is 
of  course  not  a  thing  by  itself,  but  is  a  finer  product 
wrought  up  out  of  the  various  impulses  that  life  af- 
fords, and  colored  by  them.  Hence  no  one  can  think 
and  act  in  a  way  that  strikes  us  as  right  unless  he  feels, 
in  great  part,  the  same  impulses  that  we  do.  If  he 
shares  the  feelings  that  seem  to  us  to  have  the  best 
claims,  it  naturally  follows,  if  he  is  a  person  of  stable 
character,  that  he  does  them  justice  in  thought  and 
action.  To  be  upright,  public-spirited,  patriotic,  chari- 
table, generous,  and  just  implies  that  a  man  has  a 
broad  personality  which  feels  the  urgency  of  sympa- 
thetic or  imaginative  motives  that  in  narrower  minds 

142 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

are  weak  or  lacking.  He  has  achieved  the  higher 
sentiments,  the  wider  range  of  personal  thought.  And 
so  far  as  we  see  in  his  conduct  that  he  feels  such  mo- 
tives and  that  they  enter  into  his  decisions,  we  are 
likely  to  call  him  good.  What  is  it  to  do  good,  in  the 
ordinary  sense?  Is  it  not  to  help  people  to  enjoy  and 
to  work,  to  fulfil  the  healthy  and  happy  tendencies 
of  human  nature;  to  give  play  to  children,  education 
to  youth,  a  career  to  men,  a  household  to  women, 
and  peace  to  old  age  ?  And  it  is  sympathy  that  makes 
a  man  wish  and  need  to  do  these  things.  One  who  is 
large  enough  to  live  the  life  of  the  race  will  feel  the 
impulses  of  each  class  as  his  own,  and  do  what  he  can 
to  gratify  them  as  naturally  as  he  eats  his  dinner. 
The  idea  that  goodness  is  something  apart  from  or- 
dinary human  nature  is  pernicious;  it  is  only  an  ampler 
expression  of  that  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  badness,  injustice,  or  wrong 
is,  in  one  of  its  aspects,  a  lack  of  sympathy.  If  a 
man's  action  is  injurious  to  interests  which  other  men 
value,  and  so  impresses  them  as  wrong,  it  must  be  be- 
cause, at  the  moment  of  action,  he  does  not  feel  those 
interests  as  they  do.  Accordingly  the  wrong-doer  is 
either  a  person  whose  sympathies  do  not  embrace 
the  claims  he  wrongs,  or  one  who  lacks  sufficient  sta- 
bility of  character  to  express  his  sympathies  in  action. 
A  liar,  for  instance,  is  either  one  who  does  not  feel 
strongly  the  dishonor,  injustice,  and  confusion  of  lying, 
or  one  who,  feeling  them  at  times,  does  not  retain  the 
feeling  in  decisive  moments.  And  so  a  brutal  person 
may  be  such  either  in  a  dull  or  chronic  way,  which 

143 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

does  not  know  the  gentler  sentiments  at  any  time,  or 
in  a  sudden  and  passionate  way  which  perhaps  al- 
ternates with  kindness. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  regarding  mental  health 
in  general;  its  presence  or  absence  may  always  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  sympathy.  The  test  of  sanity 
which  every  one  instinctively  applies  is  that  of  a 
certain  tact  or  feeling  of  the  social  situation,  which 
we  expect  of  all  right-minded  people  and  which  flows 
from  sympathetic  contact  with  other  minds.  One 
whose  words  and  bearing  give  the  impression  that 
he  stands  apart  and  lacks  intuition  of  what  others 
are  thinking  is  judged  as  more  or  less  absent-minded, 
queer,  dull,  or  even  insane  or  imbecile,  according  to 
the  character  and  permanence  of  the  phenomenon. 
The  essence  of  insanity,  from  the  social  point  of  view 
(and,  it  would  seem,  the  only  final  test  of  it)  is  a  con- 
firmed lack  of  touch  with  other  minds  in  matters  upon 
which  men  in  general  are  agreed;  and  imbecility  might 
be  defined  as  a  general  failure  to  compass  the  more 
complex  sympathies. 

A  man's  sympathies  as  a  whole  reflect  the  social 
order  in  which  he  lives,  or  rather  they  are  a  particular 
phase  of  it.  Every  group  of  which  he  is  really  a  mem- 
ber, in  which  he  has  any  vital  share,  must  live  in 
his  sympathy;  so  that  his  mind  is  a  microcosm  of  so 
much  of  society  as  he  truly  belongs  to.  Every  social 
phenomenon,  we  need  to  remember,  is  simply  a  col- 
lective view  of  what  we  find  distributively  in  par- 
ticular persons — public  opinion  is  a  phase  of  the  judg- 

144 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

merits  of  individuals;  traditions  and  institutions  live 
in  the  thought  of  particular  men,  social  standards  of 
right  do  not  exist  apart  from  private  consciences, 
and  so  on.  Accordingly,  so  far  as  a  man  has  any 
vital  part  in  the  life  of  a  time  or  a  country,  that  life 
is  imaged  in  those  personal  ideas  or  sympathies  which 
are  the  impress  of  his  intercourse. 

So,  whatever  is  peculiar  to  our  own  time  implies 
a  corresponding  peculiarity  in  the  sympathetic  life 
of  each  one  of  us.  Thus  the  age,  at  least  in  the  more 
intellectually  active  parts  of  life,  is  strenuous,  char- 
acterized by  the  multiplication  of  points  of  personal 
contact  through  enlarged  and  accelerated  communi- 
cation. The  mental  aspect  of  this  is  a  more  rapid 
and  multitudinous  flow  of  personal  images,  sentiments, 
and  impulses.  Accordingly  there  prevails  among  us 
an  animation  of  thought  that  tends  to  lift  men  above 
sensuality;  and  there  is  also  possible  a  choice  of  re- 
lations that  opens  to  each  mind  a  more  varied  and 
congenial  development  than  the  past  afforded.  On 
the  other  hand,  these  advantages  are  not  without 
their  cost;  the  intensity  of  life  often  becomes  a  strain, 
bringing  to  many  persons  an  over-excitation  which 
weakens  or  breaks  down  character;  as  we  see  in  the 
increase  of  suicide  and  insanity,  and  in  many  similar 
phenomena.  An  effect  very  generally  produced  upon 
all  except  the  strongest  minds  appears  to  be  a  sort  of 
superficiality  of  imagination,  a  dissipation  and  atten- 
uation of  impulses,  which  watches  the  stream  of  per- 
sonal imagery  go  by  like  a  procession,  but  lacks  the 
power  to  organize  and  direct  it. 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  different  degrees  of  urgency  in  personal  im- 
pressions are  reflected  in  the  behavior  of  different 
classes  of  people.  Every  one  must  have  noticed  that 
he  finds  more  real  openness  of  sympathy  in  the  coun- 
try than  in  the  city — though  perhaps  there  is  more 
of  a  superficial  readiness  in  the  latter — and  often  more 
among  plain,  hand-working  people  than  among  pro- 
fessional and  business  men.  The  main  reason  for 
this,  I  take  it,  is  that  the  social  imagination  is  not  so 
hard  worked  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  In  the 
mountains  of  North  Carolina  the  hospitable  inhabi- 
tants will  take  in  any  stranger  and  invite  him  to  spend 
the  night;  but  this  is  hardly  possible  upon  Broad- 
way; and  the  case  is  very  much  the  same  with  the 
hospitality  of  the  mind.  If  one  sees  few  people  and 
hears  a  new  thing  only  once  a  week,  he  accumulates 
a  fund  of  sociability  and  curiosity  very  favorable  to 
eager  intercourse;  but  if  he  is  assailed  all  day  and 
every  day  by  calls  upon  feeling  and  thought  in  excess 
of  his  power  to  respond,  he  soon  finds  that  he  must 
put  up  some  sort  of  a  barrier.  Sensitive  people  who 
live  where  life  is  insistent  take  on  a  sort  of  social 
shell  whose  function  is  to  deal  mechanically  with  or- 
dinary relations  and  preserve  the  interior  from  de- 
struction. They  are  likely  to  acquire  a  conventional 
smile  and  conventional  phrases  for  polite  intercourse, 
and  a  cold  mask  for  curiosity,  hostility,  or  solicitation. 
In  fact,  a  vigorous  power  of  resistance  to  the  nu- 
merous influences  that  in  no  way  make  for  the  sub- 
stantial development  of  his  character,  but  rather  tend 
to  distract  and  demoralize  him,  is  a  primary  need  of 

146 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

one  who  lives  in  the  more  active  portions  of  present 
society,  and  the  loss  of  this  power  by  strain  is  in 
countless  instances  the  beginning  of  mental  and  moral 
decline.  There  are  times  of  abounding  energy  when 
we  exclaim  with  Schiller, 

"Seid  willkommen,  Millionen, 
Diesen  Kuss  der  ganzen  Welt ! " 

but  it  is  hardly  possible  or  desirable  to  maintain  this 
attitude  '  continuously.  Universal  sympathy  is  im- 
practicable; what  we  need  is  better  control  and  selec- 
tion, avoiding  both  the  narrowness  of  our  class  and 
the  dissipation  of  promiscuous  impressions.  It  is 
well  for  a  man  to  open  out  and  take  in  as  much  of 
life  as  he  can  organize  into  a  consistent  whole,  but  to 
go  beyond  that  is  not  desirable.  In  a  time  of  insistent 
suggestion,  like  the  present,  it  is  fully  as  important 
to  many  of  us  to  know  when  and  how  to  restrict  the 
impulses  of  sympathy  as  it  is  to  avoid  narrowness. 
And  this  is  in  no  way  inconsistent,  I  think,  with  that 
modern  democracy  of  sentiment — also  connected  with 
the  enlargement  of  communication — which  depre- 
cates the  limitation  of  sympathy  by  wealth  or  posi- 
tion. Sympathy  must  be  selective,  but  the  less  it 
is  controlled  by  conventional  and  external  circum- 
stances, such  as  wealth,  and  the  more  it  penetrates 
to  the  essentials  of  character,  the  better.  It  is  this 
liberation  from  convention,  locality,  and  chance,  I 
think,  that  the  spirit  of  the  time  calls  for. 

Again,  the  life  of  this  age  is  more  diversified  than 
life  ever  was  before,  and  this  appears  in  the  mind  of 

147 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  person  who  shares  it  as  a  greater  variety  of  inter- 
ests and  affiliations.  A  man  may  be  regarded  as  the 
point  of  intersection  of  an  indefinite  number  of  circles 
representing  social  groups,  having  as  many  arcs  pass- 
ing through  him  as  there  are  groups.  This  diversity 
is  connected  with  the  growth  of  communication,  and  is 
another  phase  of  the  general  enlargement  and  varie- 
gation of  life.  Because  of  the  greater  variety  of 
imaginative  contacts  it  is  impossible  for  a  normally 
open-minded  individual  not  to  lead  a  broader  life,  in 
some  respects  at  least,  than  he  would  have  led  in 
the  past.  Why  is  it,  for  instance,  that  such  ideas  as 
brotherhood  and  the  sentiment  of  equal  right  are  now 
so  generally  extended  to  all  classes  of  men?  Prima- 
rily, I  think,  because  all  classes  have  become  imagi- 
nable, by  acquiring  power  and  means  of  expression. 
He  whom  I  imagine  without  antipathy  becomes  my 
brother.  If  we  feel  that  we  must  give  aid  to  another, 
it  is  because  that  other  lives  and  strives  in  our  imagi- 
nations, and  so  is  a  part  of  ourselves.  The  shallow 
separation  of  self  and  other  in  common  speech  ob- 
scures the  extreme  simplicity  and  naturalness  of  such 
feelings.  If  I  come  to  imagine  a  person  suffering 
wrong  it  is  not  "altruism"  that  makes  me  wish  to 
right  that  wrong,  but  simple  human  impulse.  He  is 
my  life,  as  really  and  immediately  as  anything  else. 
His  symbol  arouses  a  sentiment  which  is  no  more  his 
than  mine. 

Thus  we  lead  a  wider  life;  and  yet  it  is  also  true 
that  there  is  demanded  of  us  a  more  distinct  special- 

148 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

ization  than  has  been  required  in  the  past.  The  com- 
plexity of  society  takes  the  form  of  organization,  that 
is,  of  a  growing  unity  and  breadth  sustained  by  the 
co-operation  of  differentiated  parts,  and  the  man  of 
the  age  must  reflect  both  the  unity  and  the  differentia- 
tion; he  must  be  more  distinctly  a  specialist  and  at 
the  same  time  more  a  man  of  the  world. 

It  seems  to  many  a  puzzling  question  whether,  on 
the  whole,  the  breadth  or  the  specialization  is  more 
potent  in  the  action  of  modern  life  upon  the  individual  ; 
and  by  insisting  on  one  aspect  or  the  other  it  is  easy 
to  frame  an  argument  to  show  either  that  personal 
life  is  becoming  richer  or  that  man  is  getting  to  be  a 
mere  cog  in  a  machine.*  I  think,  however,  that  these 
two  tendencies  are  not  really  opposite  but  comple- 
mentary; that  it  is  not  a  case  of  breadth  versus  special- 
ization, but,  in  the  long  run  at  least,  of  breadth  plus 
specialization  to  produce  a  richer  and  more  various 
humanity.  There  are  many  evils  connected  with  the 
sudden  growth  in  our  day  of  new  social  structures, 
and  the  subjection  of  a  part  of  the  people  to  a  narrow 
and  deadening  routine  is  one  of  them,  but  I  think  that 
a  healthy  specialization  has  no  tendency  to  bring  this 
about.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  part  of  a  liberating 
development.  The  narrow  specialist  is  a  bad  spe- 
cialist; and  we  shall  learn  that  it  is  a  mistake  to  pro- 
duce him. 

*  Much  of  what  is  ordinarily  said  in  this  connection  indicates 
a  confusion  of  the  two  ideas  of  specialization  and  isolation. 
These  are  not  only  different  but,  in  what  they  imply,  quite 
opposite  and  inconsistent.  Speciality  implies  a  whole  to  which 
the  special  part  has  a  peculiar  relation,  while  isolation  implies 
that  there  is  no  whole. 

149 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

In  an  organized  life  isolation  cannot  succeed,  and 
a  right  specialization  does  not  isolate.  There  is  no 
such  separation  between  special  and  general  knowl- 
edge or  efficiency  as  is  sometimes  supposed.  In  what 
does  the  larger  knowledge  of  particulars  consist  if  not 
in  perceiving  their  relation  to  wholes?  Has  a  student 
less  general  knowledge  because  he  is  familiar  with  a 
specialty,  or  is  it  not  rather  true  that  in  so  far  as  he 
knows  one  thing  well  it  is  a  window  through  which 
he  sees  things  in  general? 

There  is  no  way  to  penetrate  the  surface  of  life  but 
by  attacking  it  earnestly  at  a  particular  point.  If  one 
takes  his  stand  in  a  field  of  corn  when  the  young 
plants  have  begun  to  sprout,  all  the  plants  in  the  field 
will  appear  to  be  arranged  in  a  system  of  rows  radi- 
ating from  his  feet;  and  no  matter  where  he  stands 
the  system  will  appear  to  centre  at  that  point.  It  is 
so  with  any  standpoint  in  the  field  of  thought  and 
intercourse;  to  possess  it  is  to  have  a  point  of  vantage 
from  which  the  whole  may,  in  a  particular  manner,  be 
apprehended.  It  is  surely  a  matter  of  common  ob- 
servation that  a  man  who  knows  no  one  thing  inti- 
mately has  no  views  worth  hearing  on  things  in  gen- 
eral. The  farmer  philosophizes  in  terms  of  crops, 
soils,  markets,  and  implements,  the  mechanic  gener- 
alizes his  experience  of  wood  and  iron,  the  seaman 
reaches  similar  conclusions  by  his  own  special  road; 
and  if  the  scholar  keeps  pace  with  these  it  must  be 
by  an  equally  virile  productivity.  It  is  a  common 
opinion  that  breadth  of  culture  is  a  thing  by  itself,  to 
be  imparted  by  a  particular  sort  of  studies,  as,  for 

150 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

instance,  the  classics,  modern  languages,  and  so  on. 
And  there  is  a  certain  practical  truth  in  this,  owing, 
I  think,  to  the  fact  that  certain  studies  are  taught  in 
a  broad  or  cultural  way,  while  others  are  not.  But 
the  right  theory  of  the  matter  is  that  speciality  and 
culture  are  simply  aspects  of  the  same  healthy  mental 
growth,  and  that  any  study  is  cultural  when  taught 
in  the  best  way.  And  so  the  humblest  careers  in  life 
may  involve  culture  and  breadth  of  view,  if  the  in- 
cumbent is  trained,  as  he  should  be,  to  feel  their  larger 
relations. 

A  certain  sort  of  writers  often  assume  that  it  is  the 
tendency  of  our  modern  specialized  production  to 
stunt  the  mind  of  the  workman  by  a  meaningless  rou- 
tine; but  fair  opportunities  of  observation  and  some 
practical  acquaintance  with  machinery  and  the  men 
who  use  it  lead  me  to  think  that  this  is  not  the  gen- 
eral fact.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  precisely  the  broad 
or  cultural  traits  of  general  intelligence,  self-reliance, 
and  adaptability  that  make  a  man  at  home  and  ef- 
ficient in  the  midst  of  modern  machinery,  and  it  is 
because  the  American  workman  has  these  traits  in  a 
comparatively  high  degree  that  he  surpasses  others 
in  the  most  highly  specialized  production.  One  who 
goes  into  our  shops  will  find  that  the  intelligent  and 
adaptive  workman  is  almost  always  preferred  and 
gets  higher  wages;  and  if  there  are  large  numbers 
employed  upon  deadening  routine  it  is  partly  because 
there  is  unfortunately  a  part  of  our  population  whose 
education  makes  them  unfit  for  anything  else.  The 
type  of  mechanic  which  a  complex  industrial  system 

151 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

requires,  and  which  it  is  even  now,  on  the  whole, 
evolving,  is  one  that  combines  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  particular  tools  and  processes  with  an  intelligent 
apprehension  of  the  system  in  which  he  works.  If  he 
lacks  the  latter  he  requires  constant  oversight  and  so 
becomes  a  nuisance.  Any  one  acquainted  with  such 
matters  knows  that  "gumption"  in  workmen  is  fully 
as  important  and  much  harder  to  find  than  mere 
manual  skill;  and  that  those  who  possess  it  are  usually 
given  superior  positions.  No  doubt  there  are  cases 
in  which  intelligence  seems  to  have  passed  out  of  the 
man  into  the  machine,  leaving  the  former  a  mere 
"tender";  but  I  think  these  are  not  representative  of 
the  change  as  a  whole.*  And  if  we  pass  from  tools 
to  personal  relations  we  shall  find  that  the  specialized 
production  so  much  deprecated  is  only  one  phase  of 
a  wider  general  life,  a  life  of  comparative  freedom, 
intelligence,  education,  and  opportunity,  whose  gen- 
eral effect  is  to  enlarge  the  individual. 

The  idea  of  a  necessary  antagonism  between  spe- 
cialization and  breadth  seems  to  me  an  illusion  of  the 
same  class  as  that  which  opposes  the  individual  to 
the  social  order.     First  one  aspect  and  then  another 

*  It  may  well  be  thought  that  the  vast  development,  since 
this  passage  was  written,  of  the  automatic  tool  and  of  the  mecha- 
nized labor  that  goes  with  it,  corroborates  the  views  I  opposed. 
I  can  only  say  that  I  believe  that  the  question  of  the  effect  of  me- 
chanical development  upon  the  worker  is  still  undetermined,  that 
some  of  the  factors  now  at  work — such  as  the  supply  of  low-grade 
immigrant  labor — are  probably  transitory,  and  that  it  is  un- 
likely that,  in  the  long  run,  human  intelligence  can  be  superflu- 


152 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

is  looked  at  in  artificial  isolation,  and  it  is  not  per- 
ceived that  we  are  beholding  but  one  thing,  after  all. 

Not  only  does  the  sympathetic  life  of  a  man  re- 
flect and  imply  the  state  of  society,  but  we  may  also 
discern  in  it  some  inkling  of  those  processes,  or  prin- 
ciples of  change,  that  we  see  at  large  in  the  general 
movement  of  mankind.  This  is  a  matter  rather  be- 
yond the  scope  of  this  book;  but  a  few  illustrations 
will  show,  in  a  general  way,  what  I  mean. 

The  act  of  sympathy  follows  the  general  law  that 
nature  works  onward  by  mixing  like  and  unlike,  con- 
tinuity and  change;  and  so  illustrates  the  same  prin- 
ciple that  we  see  in  the  mingling  of  heredity  with 
variation,  specific  resemblance  with  a  differentiation 
of  sexes  and  of  individuals,  tradition  with  discussion, 
inherited  social  position  with  competition,  and  so  on. 
The  likeness  in  the  communicating  persons  is  neces- 
sary for  comprehension,  the  difference  for  interest. 
We  cannot  feel  strongly  toward  the  totally  unlike 
because  it  is  unimaginable,  unrealizable;  nor  yet 
toward  the  wholly  like  because  it  is  stale — identity 
must  always  be  dull  company.  The  power  of  other 
natures  over  us  lies  in  a  stimulating  difference  which 
causes  excitement  and  opens  communication,  in  ideas 
similar  to  our  own  but  not  identical,  in  states  of  mind 
attainable  but  not  actual.  If  one  has  energy  he  soon 
wearies  of  any  habitual  round  of  activities  and  feelings, 
and  his  organism,  competent  to  a  larger  life,  suffers 
pains  of  excess  and  want  at  the  same  time.  The  key 
to  the  situation  is  another  person  who  can  start  a  new 

153 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

circle  of  activities  and  give  the  faculties  concerned 
with  the  old  a  chance  to  rest.  As  Emerson  has  re- 
marked, we  come  into  society  to  be  played  upon. 
"Friendship,"  he  says  again,  "requires  that  rare  mean 
betwixt  likeness  and  unlikeness,  that  piques  each  with 
the  presence  of  power  and  of  consent  in  the  other 
party.  .  .  .  Let  him  not  cease  an  instant  to  be  him- 
self. The  only  joy  I  have  in  his  being  mine  is  that 
the  not  mine  is  mine.  .  .  .  There  must  be  very 
two  before  there  can  be  very  one."  *  So  Goethe, 
speaking  of  Spinoza's  attraction  for  him,  remarks  that 
the  closest  unions  rest  on  contrast ;  f  and  it  is  well 
known  that  such  a  contrast  was  the  basis  of  his  union 
with  Schiller,  "whose  character  and  life,"  he  says, 
"were  in  complete  contrast  to  my  own." %  Of  course, 
some  sorts  of  sympathy  are  especially  active  in  their 
tendency,  like  the  sympathy  of  vigorous  boys  with 
soldiers  and  sea-captains;  while  others  are  compara- 
tively quiet,  like  those  of  old  people  renewing  common 
memories.  It  is  vivid  and  elastic  where  the  tendency 
to  growth  is  strong,  reaching  out  toward  the  new, 
the  onward,  the  mysterious;  while  old  persons,  the 
undervitalized  and  the  relaxed  or  wearied  prefer  a 
mild  sociability,  a  comfortable  companionship  in 
habit;  but  even  with  the  latter  there  must  always  be 
a  stimulus  given,  something  new  suggested  or  some- 
thing forgotten  recalled,  not  merely  a  resemblance 
of  thought  but  a  "resembling  difference." 

*  See  his  Essay  on  Friendship, 
t  Lewes's  Life  of  Goethe,  vol.  i,  p.  282. 
X  Goethe,  Biographische  Einzeiheiten,  Jacobi. 
154 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

And  sympathy  between  man  and  woman,  while  it 
is  very  much  complicated  with  the  special  instinct  of 
sex,  draws  its  life  from  this  same  mixture  of  mental 
likeness  and  difference.  The  love  of  the  sexes  is 
above  all  a  need,  a  need  of  new  life  which  only  the 
other  can  unlock. 

"Ich  musst'  ihn  lieben,  weil  mit  ihm  mein  Leben 
Zum  Leben  ward,  wie  ich  es  nie  gekannt,"  * 

says  the  princess  in  Tasso;  and  this  appears  to  ex- 
press a  general  principle.  Each  sex  represents  to  the 
other  a  wide  range  of  fresh  and  vital  experience  in- 
accessible alone.  Thus  the  woman  usually  stands  for 
a  richer  and  more  open  emotional  life,  the  man  for  a 
stronger  mental  grasp,  for  control  and  synthesis. 
Alfred  without  Laura  feels  dull,  narrow,  and  coarse, 
while  Laura  on  her  part  feels  selfish  and  hysterical. 

Again,  sympathy  is  selective,  and  thus  illustrates  a 
phase  of  the  vital  process  more  talked  about  at  present 
than  any  other.  To  go  out  into  the  life  of  other  peo- 
ple takes  energy,  as  every  one  may  see  in  his  own 
experience;  and  since  energy  is  limited  and  requires 
some  special  stimulus  to  evoke  it,  sympathy  becomes 
active  only  when  our  imaginations  are  reaching  out 
after  something  we  admire  or  love,  or  in  some  way 
feel  the  need  to  understand  and  make  our  own.  A 
healthy  mind,  at  least,  does  not  spend  much  energy  on 
things  that  do  not,  in  some  way,  contribute  to  its  de- 

*  "I  had  to  love  him,  for  with  him  my  life  grew  to  such  life 
as  I  had  never  known." — Act  3,  sc.  2. 

155 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

velopment:  ideas  and  persons  that  lie  wholly  aside 
from  the  direction  of  its  growth,  or  from  which  it  has 
absorbed  all  they  have  to  give,  necessarily  lack  inter- 
est for  it  and  so  fail  to  awaken  sympathy.  An  incon- 
tinent response  to  every  suggestion  offered  indicates 
the  breaking  down  of  that  power  of  inhibition  or  re- 
fusal that  is  our  natural  defense  against  the  reception 
of  material  we  cannot  digest,  and  looks  toward  weak- 
ness, instability,  and  mental  decay.  So  with  persons 
from  whom  we  have  nothing  to  gain,  in  any  sense, 
whom  we  do  not  admire,  or  love,  or  fear,  or  hate,  and 
who  do  not  even  interest  us  as  psychological  prob- 
lems or  objects  of  charity,  we  can  have  no  sympathy 
except  of  the  most  superficial  and  fleeting  sort.  I  do 
not  overlook  the  fact  that  a  large  class  of  people  suffer 
a  loss  of  human  breadth  and  power  by  falling  into  a 
narrow  and  exclusive  habit  of  mind;  but  at  the  same 
time  personality  is  nothing  unless  it  has  character, 
individuality,  a  distinctive  line  of  growth,  and  to  have 
this  is  to  have  a  principle  of  rejection  as  well  as  recep- 
tion in  sympathy. 

Social  development  as  a  whole,  and  every  act  of 
sympathy  as  a  part  of  that  development,  is  guided 
and  stimulated  in  its  selective  growth  by  feeling.  The 
outgoing  of  the  mind  into  the  thought  of  another  is 
always,  it  would  seem,  an  excursion  in  search  of  the 
congenial;  not  necessarily  of  the  pleasant,  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense,  but  of  that  which  is  fitting  or  congruous 
with  our  actual  state  of  feeling.  Thus  we  would  not 
call  Carlyle  or  the  Book  of  Job  pleasant  exactly,  yet 
we  have  moods  in  which  these  writers,  however  lack- 
ing in  amenity,  seem  harmonious  and  attractive. 

156 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

In  fact,  our  mental  life,  individual  and  collective,  is 
truly  a  never  finished  work  of  art,  in  the  sense  that 
we  are  ever  striving,  with  such  energy  and  materials 
as  we  possess,  to  make  of  it  a  harmonious  and  con- 
genial whole.  Each  man  does  this  in  his  own  pecu- 
liar way,  and  men  in  the  aggregate  do  it  for  human 
nature  at  large,  each  individual  contributing  to  the 
general  endeavor.  There  is  a  tendency  to  judge 
every  new  influence,  as  the  painter  judges  every  fresh 
stroke  of  his  brush,  by  its  relation  to  the  whole  achieved 
or  in  contemplation,  and  to  call  it  good  or  ill  accord- 
ing to  whether  it  does  or  does  not  make  for  a  con- 
gruous development.  We  do  this  for  the  most  part 
instinctively,  that  is,  without  deliberate  reasoning; 
something  of  the  whole  past,  hereditary  and  social, 
lives  in  our  present  state  of  mind,  and  welcomes  or 
rejects  the  suggestions  of  the  moment.  There  is 
always  some  profound  reason  for  the  eagerness  that 
certain  influences  arouse  in  us,  through  which  they 
tap  our  energy  and  draw  us  in  their  direction,  so  that 
we  cling  to  and  augment  them,  growing  more  and 
more  in  their  sense.  Thus  if  one  likes  a  book,  so  that 
he  feels  himself  inclined  to  take  it  down  from  time  to 
time  and  linger  in  the  companionship  of  the  author, 
he  may  be  sure  he  is  getting  something  that  he  needs, 
though  it  may  be  long  before  he  discovers  what  it  is. 
It  is  quite  evident  that  there  must  be,  in  every  phase 
of  mental  life,  an  aesthetic  impulse  to  preside  over 
selection. 

In  common  thought  and  speech  sympathy  and  love 
are  closely  connected;  and  in  fact,  as  most  frequently 

157 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

used,  they  mean  somewhat  the  same  thing,  the  sym- 
pathy ordinarily  understood  being  an  affectionate 
sympathy  and  the  love  a  sympathetic  affection.  I 
have  already  suggested  that  sympathy  is  not  de- 
pendent upon  any  particular  emotion,  but  may,  for 
instance,  be  hostile  as  well  as  friendly;  and  it  might 
also  be  shown  that  affection,  though  it  stimulates 
sympathy  and  so  usually  goes  with  it,  is  not  insepara- 
ble from  it,  but  may  exist  in  the  absence  of  the  mental 
development  which  true  sympathy  requires.  Who- 
ever has  visited  an  institution  for  the  care  of  idiots 
and  imbeciles  must  have  been  struck  by  the  exuber- 
ance with  which  the  milk  of  human  kindness  seems 
to  flow  from  the  hearts  of  these  creatures.  If  kept 
quiet  and  otherwise  properly  cared  for  they  are  mostly 
as  amiable  as  could  be  wished,  fully  as  much  so,  ap- 
parently, as  .persons  of  normal  development;  while 
at  the  same  time  they  offer  little  or  no  resistance  to 
other  impulses,  such  as  rage  and  fear,  that  sometimes 
possess  them.  Kindliness  seems  to  exist  primarily  as 
an  animal  instinct,  so  deeply  rooted  that  mental  de- 
generacy, which  works  from  the  top  down,  does  not 
destroy  it  until  the  mind  sinks  to  the  lower  grades 
of  idiocy. 

However,  the  excitant  of  love,  in  all  its  finer  aspects, 
is  a  felt  possibility  of  communication,  a  dawning  of 
sympathetic  renewal.  We  grow  by  influence,  and 
where  we  feel  the  presence  of  an  influence  that  is 
enlarging  or  uplifting,  we  begin  to  love.  Love  is  the 
normal  and  usual  accompaniment  of  the  healthy  ex- 
pansion of  human  nature  by  communion;  and  in  turn 

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SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

is  the  stimulus  to  more  communion.  It  seems  not 
to  be  a  special  emotion  in  quite  the  same  way  that 
anger,  grief,  fear,  and  the  like  are,  but  something 
more  primary  and  general,  the  stream,  perhaps,  of 
which  these  and  many  other  sentiments  are  special 
channels  or  eddies. 

Love  and  sympathy,  then,  are  two  things  which, 
though  distinguishable,  are  very  commonly  found 
together,  each  being  an  instigator  of  the  other;  what 
we  love  we  sympathize  with,  so  far  as  our  mental 
development  permits.  To  be  sure,  it  is  also  true  that 
when  we  hate  a  person,  with  an  intimate,  imaginative, 
human  hatred,  we  enter  into  his  mind,  or  sympathize — 
any  strong  interest  will  arouse  the  imagination  and 
create  some  sort  of  sympathy — but  affection  is  a  more 
usual  stimulus. 

Love,  in  this  sense  of  kindly  sympathy,  may  have 
all  degrees  of  emotional  intensity  and  of  sympathetic 
penetration,  from  a  sort  of  passive  good-nature,  not 
involving  imagination  or  mental  activity  of  any  sort, 
up  to  an  all-containing  human  enthusiasm,  involving 
the  fullest  action  of  the  highest  faculties,  and  bring- 
ing with  it  so  strong  a  conviction  of  complete  good 
that  the  best  minds  have  felt  and  taught  that  God  is 
love.  Thus  understood,  it  is  not  any  specific  sort  of 
emotion,  at  least  not  that  alone,  but  a  general  out- 
flowing of  the  mind  and  heart,  accompanied  by  that 
gladness  that  the  fullest  life  carries  with  it.  When 
the  apostle  John  says  that  God  is  love,  and  that  every 
one  that  loveth  knoweth  God,  he  evidently  means 
something   more   than    personal   affection,    something 

159 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  knows  as  well  as  feels,  that  takes  account  of  all 
special  aspects  of  life  and  is  just  to  all. 

Ordinary  personal  affection  does  not  fill  our  ideal 
of  right  or  justice,  but  encroaches,  like  all  special  im- 
pulses. It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  to  wrong  one  per- 
son out  of  affection  for  another.  If,  for  instance,  I 
am  able  to  procure  a  desirable  position  for  a  friend, 
it  may  well  happen  that  there  is  another  and  a  fitter 
man,  whom  I  do  not  know  or  do  not  care  for,  from 
whose  point  of  view  my  action  is  an  injurious  abuse 
of  power.  It  is  evident  that  good  can  be  identified 
with  no  simple  emotion,  but  must  be  sought  in  some 
wider  phase  of  life  that  embraces  all  points  of  view. 
So  far  as  love  approaches  this  comprehensiveness  it 
tends  toward  justice,  because  the  claims  of  all  live  and 
are  adjusted  in  the  mind  of  him  who  has  it. 

"Love's  hearts  are  faithful  but  not  fond, 
Bound  for  the  just  but  not  beyond." 

Thus  love  of  a  large  and  symmetrical  sort,  not  merely 
a  narrow  tenderness,  implies  justice  and  right,  since 
a  mind  that  has  the  breadth  and  insight  to  feel  this 
will  be  sure  to  work  out  magnanimous  principles  of 
conduct. 

It  is  in  some  such  sense  as  this,  as  an  expansion  of 
human  nature  into  a  wider  life,  that  I  can  best  under- 
stand the  use  of  the  word  love  in  the  writings  of  cer- 
tain great  teachers,  for  instance  in  such  passages  as 
the  following: 

"What  is  Love,  and  why  is  it  the  chief  good,  but  because 
it  is  an  overpowering  enthusiasm?  ...     He  who  is  in  love 

160 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

is  wise  and  is  becoming  wiser,  sees  newly  every  time  he  looks 
at  the  object  beloved,  drawing  from  it  with  his  eyes  and  his 
mind  those  virtues  which  it  possesses."  * 

"A  great  thing  is  love,  ever  a  great  good;  which  alone 
makes  light  all  the  heavy  and  bears  equally  every  inequality. 
For  its  burden  is  not  a  burden,  and  it  makes  every  bitter 
sweet  and  savory.  .  .  .  Love  would  be  arisen,  not  held 
down  by  anything  base.  Love  would  be  free,  and  alienated 
from  every  worldly  affection,  that  its  intimate  desire  may  not 
be  hindered,  that  it  may  not  become  entangled  through  any 
temporal  good  fortune,  nor  fall  through  any  ill.  There  is 
nothing  sweeter  than  love,  nothing  braver,  nothing  higher, 
nothing  broader,  nothing  joyfuller,  nothing  fuller  or  better 
in  heaven  or  on  earth,  since  love  is  born  of  God,  nor  can  rest 
save  in  God  above  all  created  things. 

"He  that  loves,  flies,  runs,  and  is  joyful;  is  free  and  not 
restrained.  He  gives  all  for  all  and  has  all  in  all,  since  he 
is  at  rest  above  all  in  the  one  highest  good  from  which  every 
good  flows  and  proceeds.  He  regards  not  gifts,  but  beyond 
all  good  things  turns  to  the  giver.  Love  oft  knows  not  the 
manner,  but  its  heat  is  more  than  every  manner.  Love 
feels  no  burden,  regards  not  labors,  strives  toward  more 
than  it  attains,  argues  not  of  impossibility,  since  it  believes 
that  it  may  and  can  all. things.  Therefore  it  avails  for  all 
things,  and  fulfils  and  accomplishes  much  where  one  not  a 
lover  falls  and  lies  helpless."  f 

The  sense  of  joy,  of  freshness,  of  youth,  and  of  the 
indifference  of  circumstances,  that  comes  with  love, 
seems  to  be  connected  with  its  receptive,  outgoing 
nature.  It  is  the  fullest  life,  and  when  we  have  it 
we  feel  happy  because  our  faculties  are  richly  em- 

*  Emerson,  Address  on  The  Method  of  Nature. 

t  De  Imitatione  Christi,  part  iii,  chap.  5,  pars.  3  and  4.  Dante, 
in  the  Divina  Commedia,  means  by  love  (amore),  creative  passion 
in  all  its  forms. 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ployed;  young  because  reception  is  the  essence  of 
youth,  and  indifferent  to  conditions  because  we  feel 
by  our  present  experience  that  welfare  is  independent 
of  them.  It  is  when  we  have  lost  our  hold  upon  this 
sort  of  happiness  that  we  begin  to  be  anxious  about 
security  and  comfort,  and  to  take  a  distrustful  and 
pessimistic  attitude  toward  the  world  in  general. 

In  the  literature  of  the  feelings  we  often  find  that 
love  and  self  are  set  over  against  each  other,  as  by 
Tennyson  when  he  says: 

"Love  took  up  the  harp  of  life  and  smote  on  all  the  chords 
with  might; 
Smote  the  chord  of  self,  that,  trembling,  passed  in  music 
out  of  sight." 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  whether,  or  in  what 
sense,  this  antithesis  is  a  just  one. 

As  regards  its  relation  to  self  we  may,  perhaps, 
distinguish  two  kinds  of  love,  one  of  which  is  mingled 
with  self-feeling  and  the  other  is  not.  The  latter  is  a 
disinterested,  contemplative  joy,  in  feeling  which  the 
mind  loses  all  sense  of  its  private  existence;  while  the 
former  is  active,  purposeful,  and  appropriative,  re- 
joicing in  its  object  with  a  sense  of  being  one  with  it 
as  against  the  rest  of  the  world. 

In  so  far  as  one  feels  the  disinterested  love,  that 
which  has  no  designs  with  reference  to  its  object,  he 
has  no  sense  of  "I"  at  all,  but  simply  exists  in  some- 
thing to  which  he  feels  no  bounds.  Of  this  sort,  for 
instance,  seem  to  be  the  delight  in  natural  beauty,  in 
the  landscape  and  the  shining  sea,  the  joy  and  rest  of 

162 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

art — so  long  as  we  have  no  thought  of  production  or 
criticism — and  the  admiration  of  persons  regarding 
whom  we  have  no  intentions,  either  of  influence  or 
imitation.  It  appears  to  be  the  final  perfection  of 
this  unspecialized  joy  that  the  Buddhist  sages  seek 
in  Nirvana.  Love  of  this  sort  obliterates  that  idea 
of  separate  personality  whose  life  is  always  unsure 
and  often  painful.  One  who  feels  it  leaves  the  pre- 
carious self;  his  boat  glides  out  upon  a  wider  stream; 
he  forgets  his  own  deformity,  weakness,  shame,  or 
failure,  or  if  he  thinks  of  them  it  is  to  feel  free  of 
them,  released  from  their  coil.  No  matter  what  you 
and  I  may  be,  if  we  can  comprehend  that  which  is 
fair  and  great  we  may  still  have  it,  may  transcend 
ourselves  and  go  out  into  it.  It  carries  us  beyond 
the  sense  of  all  individuality,  either  our  own  or  others', 
into  the  feeling  of  universal  and  joyous  life.  The 
"I,"  the  specialized  self,  and  the  passions  involved 
with  it,  have  a  great  and  necessary  part  to  play,  but 
they  afford  no  continuing  city;  they  are  so  evidently 
transient  and  insecure  that  the  idealizing  mind  can- 
not rest  in  them,  and  is  glad  to  forget  them  at  times 
and  to  go  out  into  a  life  joyous  and  without  bounds 
in  which  thought  may  be  at  peace. 

But  love  that  plans  and  strives  is  always  in  some 
degree  self-love.  That  is,  self-feeling  is  correlated 
with  individualized,  purposeful  thought  and  action, 
and  so  begins  to  spring  up  as  soon  as  love  lingers  upon 
something,  forms  intentions,  and  begins  to  act.  The 
love  of  a  mother  for  her  child  is  appropriative,  as  is 
apparent  from  the  fact  that  it  is  capable  of  jealousy. 

163 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Its  characteristic  is  not  selflessness,  by  any  means, 
but  the  association  of  self-feeling  with  the  idea  of  her 
child.  It  is  no  more  selfless  in  its  nature  than  the 
ambitions  of  a  man,  and  may  or  may  not  be  morally 
superior;  the  idea  that  it  involves  self-abnegation 
seems  to  spring  from  the  crudely  material  notion  of 
personality  which  assumes  that  other  persons  are 
external  to  the  self.  And  so  of  all  productive,  spe- 
cialized love.  I  shall  say  more  of  the  self  in  the  next 
chapter,  but  my  belief  is  that  it  is  impossible  to  cherish 
and  strive  for  special  purposes  without  having  self- 
feeling  about  them;  without  becoming  more  or  less 
capable  of  resentment,  pride,  and  fear  regarding  them. 
The  imaginative  and  sympathetic  aims  that  are  com- 
monly spoken  of  as  self-renunciation  are  more  properly 
an  enlargement  of  the  self,  and  by  no  means  destroy, 
though  they  may  transform,  the  "I."  A  wholly 
selfless  love  is  mere  contemplation,  an  escape  from 
conscious  speciality,  and  a  dwelling  in  undifferentiated 
life.     It  sees  all  things  as  one  and  makes  no  effort. 

These  two  sorts  of  love  are  properly  complemen- 
tary, one  corresponding  to  production  and  giving  each 
of  us  a  specialized  intensity  and  effectiveness,  while 
in  the  other  we  find  enlargement  and  relief.  They 
are  indeed  closely  bound  together  and  each  contribu- 
tory to  the  other.  The  self  and  the  special  love  that 
goes  with  it  seem  to  grow  by  a  sort  of  crystallization 
about  them  of  elements  from  the  wider  life.  The 
man  first  loves  the  woman  as  something  transcendent, 
divine,  or  universal,  which  he  dares  not  think  of  ap- 
propriating; but  presently  he  begins  to  claim  her  as 
his  in  antithesis  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  to  have 

164 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

hopes,  fears,  and  resentments  regarding  her;  the 
painter  loves  beauty  contemplatively,  and  then  tries 
to  paint  it;  the  poet  delights  in  his  visions,  and  then 
tries  to  tell  them,  and  so  on.  It  is  necessary  to  our 
growth  that  we  should  be  capable  of  delighting  in  that 
upon  which  we  have  no  designs,  because  we  draw  our 
fresh  materials  from  this  region.  The  sort  of  self- 
love  that  is  harmful  is  one  that  has  hardened  about 
a  particular  object  and  ceased  to  expand.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  seems  that  the  power  to  enter  into  uni- 
versal life  depends  upon  a  healthy  development  of  the 
special  self.  "Willst  du  in's  Unendliche  schreiten," 
said  Goethe,  "geh  nur  im  Endlichen  nach  alien 
Seiten."  That  which  we  have  achieved  by  special, 
selfful  endeavor  becomes  a  basis  of  inference  and  sym- 
pathy, which  gives  a  wider  reach  to  our  disinterested 
contemplation.  While  the  artist  is  trying  to  paint  he 
forfeits  the  pure  joy  of  contemplation;  he  is  strenuous, 
anxious,  vain,  or  mortified;  but  when  he  ceases  trying 
he  will  be  capable,  just  because  of  this  experience,  of  a 
fuller  appreciation  of  beauty  in  general  than  he  was 
before.  And  so  of  personal  affection;  the  winning  of 
wife,  home,  and  children  involves  constant  self-asser- 
tion, but  it  multiplies  the  power  of  sympathy.  We 
cannot,  then,  exalt  one  of  these  over  the  other;  what 
would  seem  desirable  is  that  the  self,  without  losing 
its  special  purpose  and  vigor,  should  keep  expanding, 
so  that  it  should  tend  to  include  more  and  more  of 
what  is  largest  and  highest  in  the  general  life. 

It  appears,  then,  that  sympathy,  in  the  sense  of 
mental  sharing  or  communication,  is  by  no  means  a 

165 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

simple  matter,  but  that  so  much  enters  into  it  as  to 
suggest  that  by  the  time  we  thoroughly  understood 
one  sympathetic  experience  we  should  be  in  a  way 
to  understand  the  social  order  itself.  An  act  of  com- 
munication is  a  particular  aspect  of  the  whole  which 
we  call  society,  and  necessarily  reflects  that  of  which  it 
is  a  characteristic  part.  To  come  into  touch  with  a 
friend,  a  leader,  an  antagonist,  or  a  book,  is  an  act  of 
sympathy;  but  it  is  precisely  in  the  totality  of  such 
acts  that  society  consists.  Even  the  most  complex 
and  rigid  institutions  may  be  looked  upon  as  consist- 
ing of  innumerable  personal  influences  or  acts  of  sym- 
pathy, organized,  in  the  case  of  institutions,  into  a 
definite  and  continuing  whole  by  means  of  some  system 
of  permanent  symbols,  such  as  laws,  constitutions, 
sacred  writings,  and  the  like,  in  which  personal  influ- 
ences are  preserved.  And,  turning  the  matter  around, 
we  may  look  upon  every  act  of  sympathy  as  a  particu- 
lar expression  of  the  history,  institutions,  and  ten- 
dencies of  the  society  in  which  it  takes  place.  Every 
influence  which  you  or  I  can  receive  or  impart  will  be 
characteristic  of  the  race,  the  country,  the  epoch,  in 
which  our  personalities  have  grown  up. 

The  main  thing  here  is  to  bring  out  the  vital  unity 
of  every  phase  of  personal  life,  from  the  simplest  in- 
terchange of  a  friendly  word  to  the  polity  of  nations 
or  of  hierarchies.  The  common  idea  of  the  matter 
is  crudely  mechanical — that  there  are  persons  as 
there  are  bricks,  and  societies  as  there  are  walls.  A 
person,  or  some  trait  of  personality  or  of  intercourse, 
is  held  to  be  the  element  of  society,  and  the  latter  is 

166 


SYMPATHY  OR  UNDERSTANDING 

formed  by  the  aggregation  of  these  elements.  Now 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  element  of  society  in  the 
sense  that  a  brick  is  the  element  of  a  wall;  this  is 
a  mechanical  conception  quite  inapplicable  to  vital 
phenomena.  I  should  say  that  living  wholes  have 
aspects  but  not  elements. 

In  the  Capitoline  Museum  at  Rome  is  a  famous 
statue  of  Venus,  which,  like  many  works  of  this  kind, 
is  ingeniously  mounted  upon  a  pivot,  so  that  one 
who  wishes  to  study  it  can  place  it  at  any  angle  with 
reference  to  the  light  that  he  may  prefer.  Thus  he 
may  get  an  indefinite  number  of  views,  but  in  every 
view  what  he  really  observes,  so  far  as  he  observes 
intelligently,  is  the  whole  statue  in  a  particular  as- 
pect. Even  if  he  fixes  his  attention  upon  the  foot, 
or  the  great  toe,  he  sees  this  part,  if  he  sees  it  rightly, 
in  relation  to  the  work  as  a  whole.  And  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  study  of  human  life  is  analogous  in 
character.  It  is  expedient  to  divide  it  into  manage- 
able parts  in  some  way;  but  this  division  can  only 
be  a  matter  of  aspects,  not  of  elements.  The  vari- 
ous chapters  of  this  book,  for  instance,  do  not  deal 
with  separable  subjects,  but  merely  with  phases  of  a 
common  subject,  and  the  same  is  true  of  any  work 
in  psychology,  history,  or  biology. 


167 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 1.    THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

THE  "EMPIRICAL  SELF" — "i"  AS  A  STATE  OF  FEELING — ITS  RE- 
LATION TO  THE  BODY — AS  A  SENSE  OF  POWER  OR  CAUSATION — ' 
AS  A  SENSE  OF  SPECIALITY  OR  DIFFERENTIATION  IN  A  SOCIAL 
LIFE — WHEN  THE  BODY  IS  "l")  INANIMATE  OBJECTS — THE  RE- 
FLECTED OR  LOOKING-GLASS  "i" "i"  IS  ROOTED  IN  THE  PAST 

AND  VARIES  WITH  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS — ITS  RELATION  TO  HABIT 

TO      DISINTERESTED      LOVE — HOW      CHILDREN      LEARN      THE 

MEANING  OF  "i" — THE  SPECULATIVE  OR  METAPHYSICAL  "i" 
IN  CHILDREN — THE  LOOKING-GLASS  "i"  IN  CHILDREN — THE 
SAME  IN  ADOLESCENCE — "i"  IN  RELATION  TO  SEX — SIMPLICITY 
AND  AFFECTATION — SOCIAL  SELF-FEELING  IS  UNIVERSAL — THE 
GROUP  SELF  OR  "we" 

It  is  well  to  say  at  the  outset  that  by  the  word 
"self"  in  this  discussion  is  meant  simply  that  which 
is  designated  in  common  speech  by  the  pronouns  of 
the  first  person  singular,  "I,"  "me,"  "my,"  "mine," 
and  "myself."  "Self"  and  "ego"  are  used  by  meta- 
physicians and  moralists  in  many  other  senses,  more 
or  less  remote  from  the  "  I "  of  daily  speech  and  thought, 
and  with  these  I  wish  to  have  as  little  to  do  as  possible. 
What  is  here  discussed  is  what  psychologists  call  the 
empirical  self,  the  self  that  can  be  apprehended  or 
verified  by  ordinary  observation.  I  qualify  it  by  the 
word  social  not  as  implying  the  existence  of  a  self 
that  is  not  social — for  I  think  that  the  "I"  of  common 
language  always  has  more  or  less  distinct  reference 
to  other  people  as  well  as  the  speaker — but  because 

168 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

I  wish  to  emphasize  and  dwell  upon  the  social  aspect 
of  it. 

Although  the  topic  of  the  self  is  regarded  as  an 
abstruse  one  this  abstruseness  belongs  chiefly,  per- 
haps, to  the  metaphysical  discussion  of  the  "pure 
ego" — whatever  that  may  be — while  the  empirical 
self  should  not  be  very  much  more  difficult  to  get 
hold  of  than  other  facts  of  the  mind.  At  any  rate,  it 
may  be  assumed  that  the  pronouns  of  the  first  person 
have  a  substantial,  important,  and  not  very  recondite 
meaning,  otherwise  they  would  not  be  in  constant 
and  intelligible  use  by  simple  people  and  young  chil- 
dren the  world  over.  And  since  they  have  such  a 
meaning  why  should  it  not  be  observed  and  reflected 
upon  like  any  other  matter  of  fact?  As  to  the  under- 
lying mystery,  it  is  no  doubt  real,  important,  and  a 
very  fit  subject  of  discussion  by  those  who  are  compe- 
tent, but  I  do  not  see  that  it  is  a  peculiar  mystery.  I 
mean  that  it  seems  to  be  simply  a  phase  of  the  general 
mystery  of  life,  not  pertaining  to  "I"  more  than  to 
any  other  personal  or  social  fact;  so  that  here  as  else- 
where those  who  are  not  attempting  to  penetrate  the 
mystery  may  simply  ignore  it.  If  this  is  a  just  view 
of  the  matter,  "I"  is  merely  a  fact  like  any  other. 

The  distinctive  thing  in  the  idea  for  which  the 
pronouns  of  the  first  person  are  names  is  apparently 
a  characteristic  kind  of  feeling  which  may  be  called 
the  my-feeling  or  sense  of  appropriation.  Almost  any 
sort  of  ideas  may  be  associated  with  this  feeling,  and 
so  come  to  be  named  "I"  or  "mine,"  but  the  feeling, 

169 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  that  alone  it  would  seem,  is  the  determining  fac- 
tor in  the  matter.  As  Professor  James  says  in  his 
admirable  discussion  of  the  self,  the  words  "me"  and 
"self"  designate  "all  the  things  which  have  the  power 
to  produce  in  a  stream  of  consciousness  excitement 
of  a  certain  peculiar  sort."  *  This  view  is  very  fully 
set  forth  by  Professor  Hiram  M.  Stanley,  whose  work, 
"The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,"  has  an 
extremely  suggestive  chapter  on  self-feeling. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  feeling  aspect  of  the  self  is 
necessarily  more  important  than  any  other,  but  that 
it  is  the  immediate  and  decisive  sign  and  proof  of 
what  "I"  is;  there  is  no  appeal  from  it;  if  we  go  be- 
hind it  it  must  be  to  study  its  history  and  conditions, 
not  to  question  its  authority.  But,  of  course,  this 
study  of  history  and  conditions  may  be  quite  as 
profitable  as  the  direct  contemplation  of  self-feeling. 
What  I  would  wish  to  do  is  to  present  each  aspect  in 
its  proper  light. 

The  emotion  or  feeling  of  self  may  be  regarded  as  in- 
stinctive, and  was  doubtless  evolved  in  connection  with 

*  "  The  words  me,  then,  and  self,  so  far  as  they  arouse  feel- 
ing and  connote  emotional  worth,  are  objective  designations 
meaning  all  the  things  which  have  the  power  to  produce  in  a 
stream  of  consciousness  excitement  of  a  certain  peculiar  sort." 
Psychology,  i.,  p.  319.  A  little  earlier  he  says:  "In  its  widest 
possible  se7ise,  however,  a  man's  self  is  the  sum  total  of  all  he 
can  call  his,  not  only  his  body  and  his  psychic  powers,  but  his 
clothes  and  his  house,  his  wife  and  children,  his  ancestors  and 
friends,  his  reputation  and  works,  his  lands  and  horses  and  yacht 
and  bank-account.  All  these  things  give  him  the  same  emo- 
tions."    Idem,  p.  291. 

So  Wundt  says  of  "Ich":  "Es  ist  ein  Gefuhl,  nicht  eine  Vor- 
stellung,  wie  es  haufig  genannt  wird."  Grundriss  der  Psycholo- 
gie,  4  Aufiage,  S.  265. 

170 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

its  important  function  in  stimulating  and  unifying  the 
special  activities  of  individuals.*  It  is  thus  very  pro- 
foundly rooted  in  the  history  of  the  human  race  and 
apparently  indispensable  to  any  plan  of  life  at  all 
similar  to  ours.  It  seems  to  exist  in  a  vague  though 
vigorous  form  at  the  birth  of  each  individual,  and, 
like  other  instinctive  ideas  or  germs  of  ideas,  to  be 
defined  and  developed  by  experience,  becoming  associ- 
ated, or  rather  incorporated,  with  muscular,  visual,  and 
other  sensations;  with  perceptions,  apperceptions,  and 
conceptions  of  every  degree  of  complexity  and  of  in- 
finite variety  of  content;  and,  especially,  with  per- 
sonal ideas.  Meantime  the  feeling  itself  does  not 
remain  unaltered,  but  undergoes  differentiation  and 
refinement  just  as  does  any  other  sort  of  crude  innate 
feeling.  Thus,  while  retaining  under  every  phase  its 
characteristic  tone  or  flavor,  it  breaks  up  into  innu- 
merable self -sentiments.  And  concrete  self -feeling,  as 
it  exists  in  mature  persons,  is  a  whole  made  up  of  these 
various  sentiments,  along  with  a  good  deal  of  primi- 
tive emotion  not  thus  broken  up.  It  partakes  fully 
of  the  general  development  of  the  mind,  but  never 
loses  that  peculiar  gusto  of  appropriation  that  causes 
us  to  name  a  thought  with  a  first-personal  pronoun. 
The  other  contents  of  the  self-idea  are  of  little  use, 
apparently,  in  defining  it,  because  they  are  so  extremely 
various.  It  would  be  no  more  futile,  it  seems  to  me, 
to  attempt  to  define  fear  by  enumerating  the  things 

*  It  is,  perhaps,  to  be  thought  of  as  a  more  general  instinct,  of 
which  anger,  etc.,  are  differentiated  forms,  rather  than  as  stand- 
ing by  itself. 

171 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  people  are  afraid  of,  thanWo  attempt  to  define 
"I"  by  enumerating  the  objects  with  which  the  word 
is  associated.  Very  much  as  fear  means  primarily  a 
state  of  feeling,  or  its  expression,  and  not  darkness, 
fire,  lions,  snakes,  or  other  things  that  excite  it,  so 
"I"  means  primarily  self -feeling,  or  its  expression,  and 
not  body,  clothes,  treasures,  ambition,  honors,  and  the 
like,  with  which  this  feeling  may  be  connected.  In 
either  case  it  is  possible  and  useful  to  go  behind  the 
feeling  and  inquire  what  ideas  arouse  it  and  why 
they  do  so,  but  this  is  in  a  sense  a  secondary  investi- 
gation. 

Since  "I"  is  known  to  our  experience  primarily  as 
a  feeling,  or  as  a  feeling-ingredient  in  our  ideas,  it 
cannot  be  described  or  defined  without  suggesting 
that  feeling.  We  are  sometimes  likely  to  fall  into  a 
formal  and  empty  way  of  talking  regarding  questions 
of  emotion,  by  attempting  to  define  that  which  is  in 
its  nature  primary  and  indefinable.  A  formal  defi- 
nition of  self-feeling,  or  indeed  of  any  sort  of  feeling, 
must  be  as  hollow  as  a  formal  definition  of  the  taste 
of  salt,  or  the  color  red;  we  can  expect  to  know  what 
it  is  only  by  experiencing  it.  There  can  be  no  final 
test  of  the  self  except  the  way  we  feel ;  it  is  that  toward 
which  we  have  the  "my"  attitude.  But  as  this  feeling 
is  quite  as  familiar  to  us  and  as  easy  to  recall  as  the 
taste  of  salt  or  the  color  red,  there  should  be  no  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  what  is  meant  by  it.  One 
need  only  imagine  some  attack  on  his  "me,"  say 
ridicule  of  his  dress  or  an  attempt  to  take  away  his 
property  or  his  child,  or  his  good  name  by  slander, 

172 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

and  self-feeling  immediately  appears.  Indeed,  he  need 
only  pronounce,  with  strong  emphasis,  one  of  the  self- 
words,  like  "I"  or  "my,"  and  self -feeling  will  be  re- 
called by  association.  Another  good  way  is  to  enter 
by  sympathy  into  some  self-assertive  state  of  mind 
depicted  in  literature;  as,  for  instance,  into  that  of 
Coriolanus  when,  having  been  sneered  at  as  a  "boy 
of  tears,"  he  cries  out: 

"Boy!  .  .  . 
If  you  have  writ  your  annals  true,  'tis  there, 
That,  like  an  eagle  in  a  dovecote,  I 
Fluttered  your  Volscians  in  Corioli; 
Alone  I  did  it— Boy!" 

Here  is  a  self  indeed,  which  no  one  can  fail  to  feel, 
though  he  might  be  unable  to  describe  it.  What  a 
ferocious  scream  of  the  outraged  ego  is  that  "I"  at 
the  end  of  the  second  line ! 

So  much  is  written  on  this  topic  that  ignores  self- 
feeling  and  thus  deprives  "self"  of  all  vivid  and  pal- 
pable meaning,  that  I  feel  it  permissible  to  add  a  few 
more  passages  in  which  this  feeling  is  forcibly  ex- 
pressed. Thus  in  Lowell's  poem,  "A  Glance  Behind 
the  Curtain,"  Cromwell  says: 

"I,  perchance, 
Am  one  raised  up  by  the  Almighty  arm 
To  witness  some  great  truth  to  all  the  world." 

And  his  Columbus,  on  the  bow  of  his  vessel,  solilo- 
quizes : 

"Here  am  I,  with  no  friend  but  the  sad  sea, 
The  beating  heart  of  this  great  enterprise, 
Which,  without  me,  would  stiffen  in  swift  death." 
173 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

And  so  the  "I  am  the  way"  which  we  read  in  the 
New  Testament  is  surely  the  expression  of  a  senti- 
ment not  very  different  from  these.  In  the  following 
we  have  a  more  plaintive  sentiment  of  self: 

Philoctetes. — And  know'st  thou  not,  0  boy,  whom  thou  dost 

see? 
Neoptolemus. — How  can  I  know  a  man  I  ne'er  beheld? 
Philoctetes. — And  didst  thou  never  hear  my  name,  nor  fame 

Of  these  my  ills,  in  which  I  pined  away? 
Neoptolemus. — Know  that  I   nothing  know  of  what  thou 

ask'st. 
Philoctetes. — 0  crushed  with  many  woes,  and  of  the  Gods 

Hated  am  I,  of  whom,  in  this  my  woe, 

No  rumor  travelled  homeward,  nor  went  forth 

Through  any  clime  of  Hellas.* 

We  all  have  thoughts  of  the  same  sort  as  these, 
and  yet  it  is  possible  to  talk  so  coldly  or  mystically 
about  the  self  that  one  begins  to  forget  that  there  is, 
really,  any  such  thing. 

But  perhaps  the  best  way  to  realize  the  naive  mean- 
ing of  "I"  is  to  listen  to  the  talk  of  children  playing 
together,  especially  if  they  do  not  agree  very  well. 
They  use  the  first  person  with  none  of  the  conventional 
self-repression  of  their  elders,  but  with  much  emphasis 
and  variety  of  inflection,  so  that  its  emotional  ani- 
mus is  unmistakable. 

Self-feeling  of  a  reflective  and  agreeable  sort,  an 
appropriative  zest  of  contemplation,  is  strongly  sug- 
gested by  the  word  "gloating."  To  gloat,  in  this 
sense,  is  as  much  as  to  think  "mine,  mine,  mine," 

*  Plumptre's  Sophocles,  p.  352. 
174 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

with  a  pleasant  warmth  of  feeling.  Thus  a  boy  gloats 
over  something  he  has  made  with  his  scroll-saw,  over 
the  bird  he  has  brought  down  with  his  gun,  or  over 
his  collection  of  stamps  or  eggs;  a  girl  gloats  over  her 
new  clothes,  and  over  the  approving  words  or  looks 
of  others;  a  farmer  over  his  fields  and  his  stock;  a 
business  man  over  his  trade  and  his  bank-account; 
a  mother  over  her  child;  the  poet  over  a  successful 
quatrain;  the  self-righteous  man  over  the  state  of  his 
soul;  and  in  like  manner  every  one  gloats  over  the 
prosperity  of  any  cherished  idea. 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  saying  that  self-feel- 
ing is  clearly  marked  off  in  experience  from  other 
kinds  of  feeling;  but  it  is,  perhaps,  as  definite  in  this 
regard  as  anger,  fear,  grief,  and  the  like.  To  quote 
Professor  James,  "The  emotions  themselves  of  self- 
satisfaction  and  abasement  are  of  a  unique  sort,  each 
as  worthy  to  be  classed  as  a  primitive  emotional 
species  as  are,  for  example,  rage  or  pain."  *  It  is 
true  here,  as  wherever  mental  facts  are  distinguished, 
that  there  are  no  fences,  but  that  one  thing  merges 
by  degrees  into  another.  Yet  if  "I"  did  not  denote 
an  idea  much  the  same  in  all  minds  and  fairly  distin- 
guishable from  other  ideas,  it  could  not  be  used  freely 
and  universally  as  a  means  of  communication. 

As  many  people  have  the  impression  that  the  veri- 
fiable self,  the  object  that  we  name  with  "I,"  is  usually 
the  material  body,  it  may  be  well  to  say  that  this 
impression  is  an  illusion,  easily  dispelled  by  any  one 
*  Psychology,  i,  p.  307. 
175 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

who  will  undertake  a  simple  examination  of  facts. 
It  is  true  that  when  we  philosophize  a  little  about 
"I"  and  look  around  for  a  tangible  object  to  which  to 
attach  it,  we  soon  fix  upon  the  material  body  as  the 
most  available  locus;  but  when  we  use  the  word 
naively,  as  in  ordinary  speech,  it  is  not  very  common 
to  think  of  the  body  in  connection  with  it;  not  nearly 
so  common  as  it  is  to  think  of  other  things.  There 
is  no  difficulty  in  testing  this  statement,  since  the  word 
"I"  is  one  of  the  commonest  in  conversation  and 
literature,  so  that  nothing  is  more  practicable  than 
to  study  its  meaning  at  any  length  that  may  be  de- 
sired. One  need  only  listen  to  ordinary  speech  until 
the  word  has  occurred,  say,  a  hundred  times,  noting 
its  connections,  or  observe  its  use  in  a  similar  number 
of  cases  by  the  characters  in  a  novel.  Ordinarily  it 
will  be  found  that  in  not  more  than  ten  cases  in  a 
hundred  does  "I"  have  reference  to  the  body  of  the 
person  speaking.  It  refers  chiefly  to  opinions,  pur- 
poses, desires,  claims,  and  the  like,  concerning  matters 
that  involve  no  thought  of  the  body.  I  think  or  feel 
so  and  so;  /  wish  or  intend  so  and  so;  I  want  this  or 
that;  are  typical  uses,  the  self-feeling  being  associated 
with  the  view,  purpose,  or  object  mentioned.  It 
should  also  be  remembered  that  "my"  and  "mine" 
are  as  much  the  names  of  the  self  as  "I,"  and  these, 
of  course,  commonly  refer  to  miscellaneous  posses- 
sions. 

I  had  the  curiosity  to  attempt  a  rough  classifica- 
tion of  the  first  hundred  "IV  and  "me's"  in  Hamlet, 
with  the  following  results.     The  pronoun  was  used  in 

176 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

connection  with  perception,  as  "I  hear,"  "I  see," 
fourteen  times;  with  thought,  sentiment,  intention, 
etc.,  thirty-two  times;  with  wish,  as  "I  pray  you," 
six  times;  as  speaking — "I'll  speak  to  it" — sixteen 
times;  as  spoken  to,  twelve  times;  in  connection  with 
action,  involving  perhaps  some  vague  notion  of  the 
body,  as  "I  came  to  Denmark,"  nine  times;  vague  or 
doubtful,  ten  times;  as  equivalent  to  bodily  appear- 
ance— "No  more  like  my  father  than  I  to  Hercules" — 
once.  Some  of  the  classifications  are  arbitrary,  and 
another  observer  would  doubtless  get  a  different  re- 
sult; but  he  could  not  fail,  I  think,  to  conclude  that 
Shakespeare's  characters  are  seldom  thinking  of  their 
bodies  when  they  say  "I"  or  "me."  And  in  this 
respect  they  appear  to  be  representative  of  mankind 
in  general. 

As  already  suggested,  instinctive  self-feeling  is  doubt- 
less connected  in  evolution  with  its  important  function 
in  stimulating  and  unifying  the  special  activities  of 
individuals.  It  appears  to  be  associated  chiefly  with 
ideas  of  the  exercise  of  power,  of  being  a  cause,  ideas 
that  emphasize  the  antithesis  between  the  mind  and 
the  rest  of  the  world.  The  first  definite  thoughts  that 
a  child  associates  with  self-feeling  are  probably  those 
of  his  earliest  endeavors  to  control  visible  objects — 
his  limbs,  his  playthings,  his  bottle,  and  the  like. 
Then  he  attempts  to  control  the  actions  of  the  persons 
about  him,  and  so  his  circle  of  power  and  of  self- 
feeling  widens  without  interruption  to  the  most  com- 
plex objects  of  mature  ambition.     Although  he  does 

177 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

not  say  "I"  or  "my"  during  the  first  year  or  two, 
yet  he  expresses  so  clearly  by  his  actions  the  feeling 
that  adults  associate  with  these  words  that  we  cannot 
deny  him  a  self  even  in  the  first  weeks. 

The  correlation  of  self-feeling  with  purposeful  ac- 
tivity is  easily  seen  by  observing  the  course  of  any 
productive  enterprise.  If  a  boy  sets  about  making  a 
boat,  and  has  any  success,  his  interest  in  the  matter 
waxes,  he  gloats  over  it,  the  keel  and  stem  are  dear 
to  his  heart,  and  its  ribs  are  more  to  him  than  those 
of  his  own  frame.  He  is  eager  to  call  in  his  friends 
and  acquaintances,  saying  to  them,  "See  what  I  am 
doing!  Is  it  not  remarkable?"  feeling  elated  when 
it  is  praised,  and  resentful  or  humiliated  when  fault 
is  found  with  it.  But  so  soon  as  he  finishes  it  and 
turns  to  something  else,  his  self-feeling  begins  to  fade 
away  from  it,  and  in  a  few  weeks  at  most  he  will  have 
become  comparatively  indifferent.  We  all  know  that 
much  the  same  course  of  feeling  accompanies  the 
achievements  of  adults.  It  is  impossible  to  produce  a 
picture,  a  poem,  an  essay,  a  difficult  bit  of  masomy, 
or  any  other  work  of  art  or  craft,  without  having 
self-feeling  regarding  it,  amounting  usually  to  con- 
siderable excitement  and  desire  for  some  sort  of  appre- 
ciation; but  this  rapidly  diminishes  with  the  activity 
itself,  and  often  lapses  into  indifference  after  it  ceases. 

It  may  perhaps  be  objected  that  the  sense  of  self, 
instead  of  being  limited  to  times  of  activity  and  defi- 
nite purpose,  is  often  most  conspicuous  when  the 
mind  is  unoccupied  or  undecided,  and  that  the  idle 
and  ineffectual  are  commonly  the  most  sensitive  in 

178 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

their  self-esteem.  This,  however,  may  be  regarded 
as  an  instance  of  the  principle  that  all  instincts  are 
likely  to  assume  troublesome  forms  when  denied  whole- 
some expression.  The  need  to  exert  power,  when 
thwarted  in  the  open  fields  of  life,  is  the  more  likely 
to  assert  itself  in  trifles. 


The  social  self  is  simply  any  idea,  or  system  of 
ideas,  drawn  from  the  communicative  life,  that  the 
mind  cherishes  as  its  own.  Self-feeling  has  its  chief 
scope  within  the  general  life,  not  outside  of  it,i  the 
special  endeavor  or  tendency  of  which  it  is  the  emo- 
tional aspect  finds  its  principal  field  of  exercise  in  a 
world  of  personal  forces,  reflected  in  the  mind  by  a 
world  of  personal  impressions. 

As  connected  with  the  thought  of  other  persons  the  self 
idea  is  always  a  consciousness  of  the  peculiar  or  differ- 
entiated aspect  of  one's  life,  because  that  is  the  aspect 
that  has  to  be  sustained  by  purpose  and  endeavor, 
and  its  more  aggressive  forms  tend  to  attach  them- 
selves to  whatever  one  finds  to  be  at  once  congenial 
to  one's  own  tendencies  and  at  variance  with  those  of 
others  with  whom  one  is  in  mental  contact.  It  is 
here  that  they  are  most  needed  to  serve  their  func- 
tion of  stimulating  characteristic  activity,  of  foster- 
ing those  personal  variations  which  the  general  plan 
of  life  seems  to  require.  Heaven,  says  Shakespeare, 
doth  divide 

"The  state  of  man  in  divers  functions, 
Setting  endeavor  in  continual  motion," 
179 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  self-feeling  is  one  of  the  means  by  which  this 
diversity  is  achieved. 

Agreeably  to  this  view  we  find  that  the  aggressive 
self  manifests  itself  most  conspicuously  in  an  appro- 
priativeness  of  objects  of  common  desire,  correspond- 
ing to  the  individual's  need  of  power  over  such  objects 
to  secure  his  own  peculiar  development,  and  to  the 
danger  of  opposition  from  others  who  also  need  them. 
And  this  extends  from  material  objects  to  lay  hold, 
in  the  same  spirit,  of  the  attentions  and  affections  of 
other  people,  of  all  sorts  of  plans  and  ambitions,  in- 
cluding the  noblest  special  purposes  the  mind  can 
entertain,  and  indeed  of  any  conceivable  idea  which 
may  come  to  seem  a  part  of  one's  life  and  in  need  of 
assertion  against  some  one  else.  The  attempt  to  limit 
the  word  self  and  its  derivatives  to  the  lower  aims  of 
personality  is  quite  arbitrary;  at  variance  with  com- 
mon sense  as  expressed  by  the  emphatic  use  of  "I" 
in  connection  with  the  sense  of  duty  and  other  high 
motives,  and  unphilosophical  as  ignoring  the  function 
of  the  self  as  the  organ  of  specialized  endeavor  of  higher 
as  well  as  lower  kinds. 

That  the  "I"  of  common  speech  has  a  meaning 
which  includes  some  sort  of  reference  to  other  per- 
sons is  involved  in  the  very  fact  that  the  word  and  the 
ideas  it  stands  for  are  phenomena  of  language  and 
the  communicative  life.  It  is  doubtful  whether  it  is 
possible  to  use  language  at  all  without  thinking  more 
or  less  distinctly  of  some  one  else,  and  certainly  the 
things  to  which  we  give  names  and  which  have  a  large 
place  in  reflective  thought  are  almost  always  those 

180 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

which  are  impressed  upon  us  by  our  contact  with 
other  people.  Where  there  is  no  communication  there 
can  be  no  nomenclature  and  no  developed  thought. 
What  we  call  "me,"  "mine,"  or  "myself"  is,  then, 
not  something  separate  from  the  general  life,  but  the 
most  interesting  part  of  it,  a  part  whose  interest  arises 
from  the  very  fact  that  it  is  both  general  and  indi- 
vidual. That  is,  we  care  for  it  just  because  it  is  that 
phase  of  the  mind  that  is  living  and  striving  in  the 
common  life,  trying  to  impress  itself  upon  the  minds 
of  others.  "I"  is  a  militant  social  tendency,  work- 
ing to  hold  and  enlarge  its  place  in  the  general  current 
of  tendencies.  So  far  as  it  can  it  waxes,  as  all  life 
does.  To  think  of  it  as  apart  from  society  is  a  palpa- 
ble absurdity  of  which  no  one  could  be  guilty  who 
really  saw  it  as  a  fact  of  life. 

"Der  Mensch  erkennt  sich  nur  im  Menschen,  nur 
Das  Leben  lehret  jedem  was  er  sei."  * 

If  a  thing  has  no  relation  to  others  of  which  one  is 
conscious  he  is  unlikely  to  think  of  it  at  all,  and  if 
he  does  think  of  it  he  cannot,  it  seems  to  me,  regard 
it  as  emphatically  his.  The  appropriative  sense  is 
always  the  shadow,  as  it  were,  of  the  common  life, 
and  when  we  have  it  we  have  a  sense  of  the  latter  in 
connection  with  it.  Thus,  if  we  think  of  a  secluded 
part  of  the  woods  as  "ours,"  it  is  because  we  think, 
also,  that  others  do  not  go  there.  As  regards  the 
body  I  doubt  if  we  have  a  vivid  my-feeling  about  any 

*  "Only  in  man  does  man  know  himself;  life  alone  teaches 
each  one  what  he  is." — Goethe,  Tasso,  act  2,  sc.  3. 

181 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

part  of  it  which  is  not  thought  of,  however  vaguely, 
as  having  some  actual  or  possible  reference  to  some  one 
else.  Intense  self-consciousness  regarding  it  arises 
along  with  instincts  or  experiences  which  connect  it 
with  the  thought  of  others.  Internal  organs,  like  the 
liver,  are  not  thought  of  as  peculiarly  ours  unless  we 
are  trying  to  communicate  something  regarding  them, 
as,  for  instance,  when  they  are  giving  us  trouble  and 
we  are  trying  to  get  sympathy. 

"I,"  then,  is  not  all  of  the  mind,  but  a  peculiarly 
central,  vigorous,  and  well-knit  portion  of  it,  not  sep- 
arate from  the  rest  but  gradually  merging  into  it,  and 
yet  having  a  certain  practical  distinctness,  so  that  a 
man  generally  shows  clearly  enough  by  his  language 
and  behavior  what  his  "I"  is  as  distinguished  from 
thoughts  he  does  not  appropriate.  It  may  be  thought 
of,  as  already  suggested,  under  the  analogy  of  a  cen- 
tral colored  area  on  a  lighted  wall.  It  might  also, 
and  perhaps  more  justly,  be  compared  to  the  nucleus 
of  a  living  cell,  not  altogether  separate  from  the  sur- 
rounding matter,  out  of  which  indeed  it  is  formed, 
but  more  active  and  definitely  organized. 

The  reference  to  other  persons  involved  in  the  sense 
of  self  may  be  distinct  and  particular,  as  when  a  boy 
is  ashamed  to  have  his  mother  catch  him  at  some- 
thing she  has  forbidden,  or  it  may  be  vague  and  gen- 
eral, as  when  one  is  ashamed  to  do  something  which 
only  his  conscience,  expressing  his  sense  of  social  re- 
sponsibility, detects  and  disapproves;  but  it  is  always 
there.  (There  is  no  sense  of  "I,"  as  in  pride  or  shame, 
without  its  correlative  sense  of  you,  or  he,  or  they  .J 

182 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

Even  the  miser  gloating  over  his  hidden  gold  can  feel 
the  "mine"  only  as  he  is  aware  of  the  world  of  men 
over  whom  he  has  secret  power;  and  the  case  is  very 
similar  with  all  kinds  of  hid  treasure.  Many  painters, 
sculptors,  and  writers  have  loved  to  withhold  their 
work  from  the  world,  fondling  it  in  seclusion  until 
they  were  quite  done  with  it;  but  the  delight  in  this, 
as  in  all  secrets,  depends  upon  a  sense  of  the  value  of 
what  is  concealed. 

I  remarked  above  that^vve  think  of  the  body  as  "I" 
when  it  comes  to  have  social  function  or  significance, 
as  when  we  say  "I  am  looking  well  to-day,"  or  "I  am 
taller  than  you  are."  We  bring  it  into  the  social  world, 
for  the  time  being,  and  for  that  reason  put  our  self- 
consciousness  into  it.)  Now  it  is  curious,  though  nat- 
ural, that  in  precisely  the  same  way  we  may  call  any 
inanimate  object  "I"  with  which  we  are  identifying 
our  will  and  purpose.  This  is  notable  in  games,  like 
golf  or  croquet,  where  the  ball  is  the  embodiment  of  the 
player's  fortunes.  You  will  hear  a  man  say,  "I  am 
in  the  long  grass  down  by  the  third  tee,"  or  "I  am 
in  position  for  the  middle  arch."  So  a  boy  flying  a 
kite  will  say  "I  am  higher  than  you,"  or  one  shooting  at 
a  mark  will  declare  that  he  is  just  below  the  bullseye. 

In  a  very  large  and  interesting  class  of  cases  the 
social  reference  takes  the  form  of  a  somewhat  defi- 
nite imagination  of  how  one's  self — that  is  any  idea 
he  appropriates — appears  in  a  particular  mind,  and 
the  kind  of  self-feeling  one  has  is  determined  by  the 

183 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

attitude  toward  this  attributed  to  that  other  mind. 
A  social  self  of  this  sort  might  be  called  the  reflected 
or  looking-glass  self: 

"Each  to  each  a  looking-glass 
Reflects  the  other  that  doth  pass." 

As  we  see  our  face,  figure,  and  dress  in  the  glass,  and 
are  interested  in  them  because  they  are  ours,  and 
pleased  or  otherwise  with  them  according  as  they  do 
or  do  not  answer  to  what  we  should  like  them  to  be; 
so  in  imagination  we  perceive  in  another's  mind  some 
thought  of  our  appearance,  manners,  aims,  deeds, 
character,  friends,  and  so  on,  and  are  variously  affected 


by  it.) 


A  self-idea  of  this  sort  seems  to  have  three  principal 
elements:  the  imagination  of  our  appearance  to  the 
other  person;  the  imagination  of  his  judgment  of  that 
appearance,  and  some  sort  of  self-feeling,  such  as  pride 
or  mortification.  The  comparision  with  a  looking- 
glass  hardly  suggests  the  second  element,  the  imag- 
ined judgment,  which  is  quite  essential.  The  thing 
that  moves  us  to  pride  or  shame  is  not  the  mere  me- 
chanical reflection  of  ourselves,  but  an  imputed  senti- 
ment, the  imagined  effect  of  this  reflection  upon 
another's  mind.  This  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
the  character  and  weight  of  that  other,  in  whose  mind 
we  see  ourselves,  makes  all  the  difference  with  our 
feeling.  We  are  ashamed  to  seem  evasive  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  straightforward  man,  cowardly  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  brave  one,  gross  in  the  eyes  of  a  refined  one, 
and  so  on.     We  always  imagine,   and  in  imagining 

184 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

share,  the  judgments  of  the  other  mind.  A  man  will 
boast  to  one  person  of  an  action — say  some  sharp 
transaction  in  trade — which  he  would  be  ashamed  to 
own  to  another. 

It  should  be  evident  that  the  ideas  that  are  asso- 
ciated with  self-feeling  and  form  the  intellectual  con- 
tent of  the  self  cannot  be  covered  by  any  simple  de- 
scription, as  by  saying  that  the  body  has  such  a  part 
in  it,  friends  such  a  part,  plans  so  much,  etc.,  but 
will  vary  indefinitely  with  particular  temperaments 
and  environments.  The  tendency  of  the  self,  like 
every  aspect  of  personality,  is  expressive  of  far-reach- 
ing hereditary  and  social  factors,  and  is  not  to  be  un- 
derstood or  predicted  except  in  connection  with  the 
general  life.  Although  special,  it  is  in  no  way  sepa- 
rate^— speciality  and  separateness  are  not  only  differ- 
ent but  contradictory,  since  the  former  implies  con- 
nection with  a  whole.  The  object  of  self-feeling  is 
affected  by  the  general  course  of  history,  by  the  par- 
ticular development  of  nations,  classes,  and  profes- 
sions, and  other  conditions  of  this  sort. 

The  truth  of  this  is  perhaps  most  decisively  shown 
in  the  fact  that  even  those  ideas  that  are  most  gener- 
ally associated  or  colored  with  the  "my"  feeling,  such 
as  one's  idea  of  his  visible  person,  of  his  name,  his 
family,  his  intimate  friends,  his  property,  and  so  on, 
are  not  universally  so  associated,  but  may  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  self  by  peculiar  social  conditions.  Thus 
the  ascetics,  who  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  the 
history   of   Christianity   and   of   other   religions   and 

185 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

philosophies,  endeavored  not  without  success  to  di- 
vorce their  appropriative  thought  from  all  material 
surroundings,  and  especially  from  their  physical  per- 
sons, which  they  sought  to  look  upon  as  accidental 
and  degrading  circumstances  of  the  soul's  earthly 
sojourn.  In  thus  estranging  themselves  from  their 
bodies,  from  property  and  comfort,  from  domestic 
affections — whether  of  wife  or  child,  mother,  brother 
or  sister — and  from  other  common  objects  of  ambi- 
tion, they  certainly  gave  a  singular  direction  to  self- 
feeling,  but  they  did  not  destroy  it:  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  instinct,  which  seems  imperishable 
so  long  as  mental  vigor  endures,  found  other  ideas  to 
which  to  attach  itself;  and  the  strange  and  uncouth 
forms  which  ambition  took  in  those  centuries  when 
the  solitary,  filthy,  idle,  and  sense-tormenting  an- 
chorite was  a  widely  accepted  ideal  of  human  life, 
are  a  matter  of  instructive  study  and  reflection.  Even 
in  the  highest  exponents  of  the  ascetic  ideal,  like  St. 
Jerome,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  discipline,  far  from 
effacing  the  self,  only  concentrated  its  energy  in  lofty 
and  unusual  channels.  The  self-idea  may  be  that  of 
some  great  moral  reform,  of  a  religious  creed,  of  the 
destiny  of  one's  soul  after  death,  or  even  a  cherished 
conception  of  the  deity.  Thus  devout  writers,  like 
George  Herbert  and  Thomas  a  Kempis,  often  address 
my  God,  not  at  all  conventionally  as  I  conceive  the 
matter,  but  with  an  intimate  sense  of  appropriation. 
And  it  has  been  observed  that  the  demand  for  the  con- 
tinued and  separate  existence  of  the  individual  soul 
after  death  is  an  expression  of  self-feeling,  as  by  J.  A. 

186 


TWA  MEANING  OF  "I" 

Symonds,  who  thinks  that  it  is  connected  with  the 
intense  egotism  and  personality  of  the  European 
races,  and  asserts  that  the  millions  of  Buddhism 
shrink  from  it  with  horror.* 

Habit  and  familiarity  are  not  of  themselves  suffi- 
cient to  cause  an  idea  to  be  appropriated  into  the 
self.  Many  habits  and  familiar  objects  that  have 
been  forced  upon  us  by  circumstances  rather  than 
chosen  for  their  congeniality  remain  external  and  pos- 
sibly repulsive  to  the  self;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  novel  but  very  congenial  element  in  experience,  like 
the  idea  of  a  new  toy,  or,  if  you  please,  Romeo's  idea 
of  Juliet,  is  often  appropriated  almost  immediately, 
and  becomes,  for  the  time  at  least,  the  very  heart  of 
the  self.  Habit  has  the  same  fixing  and  consolidating 
action  in  the  growth  of  the  self  that  it  has  elsewhere, 
but  is  not  its  distinctive  characteristic. 

As  suggested  in  the  previous  chapter,  self-feeling 
may  be  regarded  as  in  a  sense  the  antithesis,  or  bet- 
ter perhaps,  the  complement,  of  that  disinterested 
and  contemplative  love  that  tends  to  obliterate  the 
sense  of  a  divergent  individuality.  Love  of  this  sort 
has  no  sense  of  bounds,  but  is  what  we  feel  when  we 
are  expanding  and  assimilating  new  and  indeterminate 
experience,  while  self-feeling  accompanies  the  appro- 
priating, delimiting,  and  defending  of  a  certain  part 
of  experience;  the  one  impels  us  to  receive  life,  the 
other   to  individuate  it.     The   self,   from   this  point 

*  John  Addington  Symonds,  by  H.  F.  Brown,  vol.  ii,  p.  120. 
187 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  view,  might  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  citadel  of  the 
mind,  fortified  without  and  containir  g  selected  trea- 
sures within,  while  love  is  an  undiviced  share  in  the 
rest  of  the  universe.  In  a  healthy  mind  each  con- 
tributes to  the  growth  of  the  other:  what  we  love  in- 
tensely or  for  a  long  time  we  are  likely  \o  bring  within 
the  citadel,  and  to  assert  as  part  of  ourself.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  only  on  the  basis  oi'  a  substantial 
self  that  a  person  is  capable  of  progressive  sympathy 
or  love. 

The  sickness  of  either  is  to  lack  the  support  of  the 
other.  There  is  no  health  in  a  mind  'except  as  it 
keeps  expanding,  taking  in  fresh  life,  feeling  love  and 
enthusiasm;  and  so  long  as  it  does  this  its  self-feeling 
is  likely  to  be  modest  and  generous;  since  these  senti- 
ments accompany  that  sense  of  the  large  and  the  su- 
perior which  love  implies.  But  if  love  closes,  the  self 
contracts  and  hardens:  the  mind  having  nothing  else 
to  occupy  its  attention  and  give  it  that  change  and 
renewal  it  requires,  busies  itself  more  and  more  with 
self-feeling,  which  takes  on  narrow  and  disgusting 
forms,  like  avarice,  arrogance,  and  fatuity.  It  is 
necessary  that  we  should  have  self-feeling  about  a 
matter  during  its  conception  and  execution;  but  when 
it  is  accomplished  or  has  failed  the  self  ought  to  break 
loose  and  escape,  renewing  its  skin  like  the  snake,  as 
Thoreau  says.  No  matter  what  a  man  does,  he  is 
not  fully  sane  or  human  unless  there  is  a  spirit  of 
freedom  in  him,  a  soul  unconfined  by  purpose  and 
larger  than  the  practicable  world.  And  this  is  really 
what  those  mean  who  inculcate  the  suppression  of  the 

188 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

self;  they  mean  that  its  rigidity  must  be  broken  up 
by  growth  and  renewal,  that  it  must  be  more  or  less 
decisively  "born  again."  A  healthy  self  must  be 
both  vigorous  and  plastic,  a  nucleus  of  solid,  well-knit 
private  purpose  and  feeling,  guided  and  nourished  by 
sympathy. 

The  view  that  ("self"  and  the  pronouns  of  the  first 
person  are  names  which  the  race  has  learned  to  apply 
to  an  instinctive  attitude  of  mind,)  and  which  each 
child  in  turn  learns  to  apply  in  a  similar  way,  was 
impressed  upon  me  by  observing  my  child  M.  at  the 
time  when  she  was  learning  to  use  these  pronouns. 
When  she  was  two  years  and  two  weeks  old  I  was 
surprised  to  discover  that  she  had  a  clear  notion  of 
the  first  and  second  persons  when  used  possessively. 
When  asked,  "Where  is  your  nose?"  she  would  put 
her  hand  upon  it  and  say  "my."  She  also  under- 
stood that  when  some  one  else  said  "my"  and  touched 
an  object,  it  meant  something  opposite  to  what  was 
meant  when  she  touched  the  same  object  and  used 
the  same  word.  Now,  any  one  who  will  exercise  his 
imagination  upon  the  question  how  this  matter  must 
appear  to  a  mind  having  no  means  of  knowing  any- 
thing about  "I"  and  "my"  except  what  it  learns  by 
hearing  them  used,  will  see  that  it  should  be  very 
puzzling.  Unlike  other  words,  the  personal  pronouns 
have,  apparently,  no  uniform  meaning,  but  convey 
different  and  even  opposite  ideas  when  employed  by 
different  persons.  It  seems  remarkable  that  children 
should  master  the  problem  before  they  arrive  at  con- 

189 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

siderable  power  of  abstract  reasoning.  How  should 
a  little  girl  of  two,  not  particularly  reflective,  have 
discovered  that  "my"  was  not  the  sign  of  a  definite 
object  like  other  words,  but  meant  something  differ- 
ent with  each  person  who  used  it?  And,  still  more 
surprising,  how  should  she  have  achieved  the  correct 
use  of  it  with  reference  to  herself  which,  it  would 
seem,  could  not  be  copied  from  any  one  else,  simply  be- 
cause no  one  else  used  it  to  describe  what  belonged 
to  her?  The  meaning  of  words  is  learned  by  associat- 
ing them  with  other  phenomena.  But  how  is  it  pos- 
sible to  learn  the  meaning  of  one  which,  as  used  by 
others,  is  never  associated  with  the  same  phenomenon 
as  when  properly  used  by  one's  self?  Watching  her 
use  of  the  first  person,  I  was  at  once  struck  with  the 
fact  that  she  employed  it  almost  wholly  in  a  possessive 
sense,  and  that,  too,  when  in  an  aggressive,  self-as- 
sertive mood.  It  was  extremely  common  to  see  R. 
tugging  at  one  end  of  a  plaything  and  M.  at  the 
other,  screaming,  "My,  my."  "Me"  was  sometimes 
nearly  equivalent  to  "my,"  and  was  also  employed  to 
call  attention  to  herself  when  she  wanted  something 
done  for  her.  Another  common  use  of  "my"  was  to 
demand  something  she  did  not  have  at  all.  Thus  if 
R.  had  something  the  like  of  which  she  wanted,  say 
a  cart,  she  would  exclaim,  "Where's  my  cart?" 

It  seemed  to  me  that  she  might  have  learned  the 
use  of  these  pronouns  about  as  follows.  The  self- 
feeling  had  always  been  there.  From  the  first  week 
she  had  wanted  things  and  cried  and  fought  for  them. 
She  had  also  become  familiar  by  observation  and  op- 

190 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

position  with  similar  appropriative  activities  on  the 
part  of  R.  Thus  she  not  only  had  the  feeling  herself, 
but  by  associating  it  with  its  visible  expression  had 
probably  divined  it,  sympathized  with  it,  resented  it, 
in  others.  Grasping,  tugging,  and  screaming  would 
be  associated  with  the  feeling  in  her  own  case  and 
would  recall  the  feeling  when  observed  in  others. 
They  would  constitute  a  language,  precedent  to  the 
use  of  first-personal  pronouns,  to  express  the  self-idea. 
All  was  ready,  then,  for  the  word  to  name  this  experi- 
ence. She  now  observed  that  R.,  when  contentiously 
appropriating  something,  frequently  exclaimed,  "my," 
"mine"  "give  it  to  me,"  "/  want  it,"  and  the  like. 
Nothing  more  natural,  then,  than  that  she  should 
adopt  these  words  as  names  for  a  frequent  and  vivid 
experience  with  which  she  was  already  familiar  in  her 
own  case  and  had  learned  to  attribute  to  others.  Ac- 
cordingly it  appeared  to  me,  as  I  recorded  in  my  notes 
at  the  time,  that  "'my'  and  'mine'  are  simply  names 
for  concrete  images  of  appropriativeness,"  embracing 
both  the  appropriative  feeling  and  its  manifestation. 
If  this  is  true  the  child  does  not  at  first  work  out  the 
I-and-you  idea  in  an  abstract  form.  [The  first-per- 
sonal pronoun  is  a  sign  of  a  concrete  thing  after  all, 
but  that  thing  is  not  primarily  the  child's  body,  or  his 
muscular  sensations  as  such,  but  the  phenomenon  of 
aggressive  appropriation,^  practised  by  himself,  wit- 
nessed in  others,  and  incited  and  interpreted  by  a 
hereditary  instinct.  This  seems  to  get  over  the  diffi- 
culty above  mentioned,  namely,  the  seeming  lack  of 
a   common   content   between  the  meaning  of   "my" 

191 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

when  used  by  another  and  when  used  by  one's  self. 
This  common  content  is  found  in  the  appropriative 
feeling  and  the  visible  and  audible  signs  of  that  feel- 
ing. An  element  of  difference  and  strife  comes  in,  of 
course,  in  the  opposite  actions  or  purposes  which  the 
"my"  of  another  and  one's  own  "my"  are  likely  to 
stand  for.  When  another  person  says  "mine"  re- 
garding something  which  I  claim,  I  sympathize  with 
him  enough  to  understand  what  he  means,  but  it  is  a 
hostile  sympathy,  overpowered  by  another  and  more 
vivid  "mine"  connected  with  the  idea  of  drawing  the 
object  my  way. 

In  other  words,  the  meaning  of  "I"  and  "mine" 
is  learned  in  the  same  way  that  the  meanings  of  hope, 
regret,  chagrin,  disgust,  and  thousands  of  other  words 
of  emotion  and  sentiment  are  learned:  that  is,  by 
having  the  feeling,  imputing  it  to  others  in  connection 
with  some  kind  of  expression,  and  hearing  the  word 
along  with  it.  As  to  its  communication  and  growth 
the  self-idea  is  in  no  way  peculiar  that  I  see,  but  essen- 
tially like  other  ideas.  In  its  more  complex  forms, 
such  as  are  expressed  by  "I"  in  conversation  and  lit- 
erature, it  is  a  social  sentiment,  or  type  of  sentiments, 
defined  and  developed  by  intercourse,  in  the  manner 
suggested  in  a  previous  chapter.* 

R.,  though  a  more  reflective  child  than  M.,  was 
much  slower  in  understanding  these  pronouns,  and  in 
his  thirty-fifth  month  had  not  yet  straightened  them 
out,  sometimes  calling  his  father  "me."     I  imagine 

*  Compare  my  "Study  of  the  Early  Use  of  Self-Words  by  a 
Child,"  in  the  Psychological  Review,  vol.  15,  p.  339. 

192 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

that  this  was  partly  because  he  was  placid  and  uncon- 
tentious  in  his  earliest  years,  manifesting  little  social 
self-feeling,  but  chiefly  occupied  with  impersonal  ex- 
periment and  reflection;  and  partly  because  he  saw 
little  of  other  children  by  antithesis  to  whom  his  self 
could  be  awakened.  M.,  on  the  other  hand,  coming 
later,  had  R.'s  opposition  on  which  to  whet  her  nat- 
urally keen  appropriativeness.  And  her  society  had 
a  marked  effect  in  developing  self -feeling  in  R.,  who 
found  self-assertion  necessary  to  preserve  his  play- 
things, or  anything  else  capable  of  appropriation.  He 
learned  the  use  of  "my,"  however,  when  he  was  about 
three  years  old,  before  M.  was  born.  He  doubtless 
acquired  it  in  his  dealings  with  his  parents.  Thus  he 
would  perhaps  notice  his  mother  claiming  the  scissors 
as  mine  and  seizing  upon  them,  and  would  be  moved 
sympathetically  to  claim  something  in  the  same  way — 
connecting  the  word  with  the  act  and  the  feeling  rather 
than  the  object.  But  as  I  had  not  the  problem  clearly 
in  mind  at  that  time  I  made  no  satisfactory  observa- 
tions. 

I  imagine,  then,  that  as  a  rule  (the  child  associates 
"I"  and  "me"  at  first  only  with  those  ideas  regarding 
which  his  appropriative  feeling  is  aroused  and  defined 
by  oppositions  He  appropriates  his  nose,  eye,  or  foot 
in  very  much  the  same  way  as  a  plaything — by  antith- 
esis to  other  noses,  eyes,  and  feet,  which  he  cannot 
control.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  tease  little  children 
by  proposing  to  take  away  one  of  these  organs,  and 
they  behave  precisely  as  if  the  "mine"  threatened 
were  a  separable  object — which  it  might  be  for  all 

193 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

they  know.  And,  as  I  have  suggested,  even  in  adult 
life,  "I,"  "me,"  and  "mine"  are  applied  with  a  strong 
sense  of  their  meaning  only  to  things  distinguished  as 
peculiar  to  us  by  some  sort  of  opposition  or  contrast. 
They  always  imply  social  life  and  relation  to  other 
persons.  That  which  is  most  distinctively  mine  is 
very  private,  it  is  true,  but  it  is  that  part  of  the  private 
which  I  am  cherishing  in  antithesis  to  the  rest  of  the 
world,  not  the  separate  but  the  special.  The  aggres- 
sive self  is  essentially  a  militant  phase  of  the  mind, 
having  for  its  apparent  function  the  energizing  of 
peculiar  activities,  and,  although  the  militancy  may 
not  go  on  in  an  obvious,  external  manner,  it  always 
exists  as  a  mental  attitude. 

In  some  of  the  best-known  discussions  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  sense  of  self  in  children  the  chief 
emphasis  has  been  placed  upon  the  speculative  or 
quasi-metaphysical  ideas  concerning  "I"  which  chil- 
dren sometimes  formulate  as  a  result  either  of  ques- 
tions from  their  elders,  or  of  the  independent  develop- 
ment of  a  speculative  instinct.  The  most  obvious 
result  of  these  inquiries  is  to  show  that  a  child,  when 
he  reflects  upon  the  self  in  this  manner,  usually  lo- 
cates "I"  in  the  body.  Interesting  and  important  as 
this  juvenile  metaphysics  is,  as  one  phase  of  mental 
development,  it  should  certainly  not  be  taken  as  an 
adequate  expression  of  the  childish  sense  of  self,  and 
probably  President  G.  Stanley  Hall,  who  has  collected 
valuable  material  of  this  kind,  does  not  so  take  it.* 

*  Compare  Some  Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self,  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  9,  p.  351. 

194 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

This  analysis  of  the  "I,"  asking  one's  self  just  where 
it  is  located,  whether  particular  limbs  are  embraced 
in  it,  and  the  like,  is  somewhat  remote  from  the  or- 
dinary, naive  use  of  the  word,  with  children  as  with 
grown  people.  In  my  own  children  I  only  once  ob- 
served anything  of  this  sort,  and  that  was  in  the  case 
of  R.,  when  he  was  struggling  to  achieve  the  correct 
use  of  his  pronouns;  and  a  futile,  and  as  I  now  think 
mistaken,  attempt  was  made  to  help  him  by  pointing 
out  the  association  of  the  word  with  his  body.  On 
the  other  hand,  every  child  who  has  learned  to  talk 
uses  "I,"  "me,"  "mine,"  and  the  like  hundreds  of 
times  a  day,  with  great  emphasis,  in  the  simple,  naive 
way  that  the  race  has  used  them  for  thousands  of 
years.  In  this  usage  they  refer  to  claims  upon  play- 
things, to  assertions  of  one's  peculiar  will  or  purpose, 
as  "/  don't  want  to  do  it  that  way,"  "I  am  going  to 
draw  a  kitty,"  and  so  on,  rarely  to  any  part  of  the 
body.  And  when  a  part  of  the  body  is  meant  it  is 
usually  by  way  of  claiming  approval  for  it,  as  "Don't 
I  look  nice?"  so  that  the  object  of  chief  interest  is 
after  all  another  person's  attitude.  The  speculative 
"I,"  though  a  true  "I,"  is  not  the  "I"  of  common 
speech  and  workaday  usefulness,  but  almost  as  re- 
mote from  ordinary  thought  as  the  ego  of  metaphysi- 
cians, of  which,  indeed,  it  is  an  immature  example. 
That  children,  when  in  this  philosophizing  state  of 
mind,  usually  refer  "I"  to  the  physical  body,  is  easily 
explained  by  the  fact  that  their  materialism,  natural 
to  all  crude  speculation,  needs  to  locate  the  self  some- 
where, and  the  body,  the  one  tangible  thing  over  which 

195 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

they  have  continuous  power,  seems  the  most  available 
home  for  it. 

The  process  by  which  self-feeling  of  the  looking- 
glass  sort  develops  in  children  may  be  followed  with- 
out much  difficulty.  Studying  the  movements  of 
others  as  closely  as  they  do  they  soon  see  a  connection 
between  their  own  acts  and  changes  in  those  move- 
ments; that  is,  they  perceive  their  own  influence  or 
power  over  persons.  The  child  appropriates  the  visi- 
ble actions  of  his  parent  or  nurse,  over  which  he  finds 
he  has  some  control,  in  quite  the  same  way  as  he  ap- 
propriates one  of  his  own  members  or  a  plaything,  and 
he  will  try  to  do  things  with  this  new  possession,  just 
as  he  will  with  his  hand  or  his  rattle.  A  girl  six  months 
old  will  attempt  in  the  most  evident  and  deliberate 
manner  to  attract  attention  to  herself,  to  set  going 
by  her  actions  some  of  those  movements  of  other 
persons  that  she  has  appropriated.  She  has  tasted  the 
joy  of  being  a  cause,  of  exerting  social  power,  and 
wishes  more  of  it.  She  will  tug  at  her  mother's  skirts, 
wriggle,  gurgle,  stretch  out  her  arms,  etc.,  all  the  time 
watching  for  the  hoped-for  effect.  These  perform- 
ances often  give  the  child,  even  at  this  age,  an  appear- 
ance of  what  is  called  affectation,  that  is,  she  seems  to 
be  unduly  preoccupied  with  what  other  people  think  of 
her.  Affectation,  at  any  age,  exists  when  the  passion 
to  influence  others  seems  to  overbalance  the  established 
character  and  give  it  an  obvious  twist  or  pose.  It 
is  instructive  to  find  that  even  Darwin  was,  in  his 
childhood,   capable  of  departing  from  truth  for  the 

196 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

sake  of  making  an  impression.  "For  instance,"  he 
says  in  his  autobiography,  "I  once  gathered  much 
valuable  fruit  from  my  father's  trees  and  hid  it  in 
the  shrubbery,  and  then  ran  in  breathless  haste  to 
spread  the  news  that  I  had  discovered  a  hoard  of 
stolen  fruit."  * 

The  young  performer  soon  learns  to  be  different 
things  to  different  people,  showing  that  he  begins  to 
apprehend  personality  and  to  foresee  its  operation. 
If  the  mother  or  nurse  is  more  tender  than  just  she 
will  almost  certainly  be  "worked"  by  systematic 
weeping.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that 
children  often  behave  worse  with  their  mother  than 
with  other  and  less  sympathetic  people.  Of  the  new 
persons  that  a  child  sees  it  is  evident  that  some  make 
a  strong  impression  and  awaken  a  desire  to  interest 
and  please  them,  while  others  are  indifferent  or  re- 
pugnant. Sometimes  the  reason  can  be  perceived  or 
guessed,  sometimes  not;  but  the  fact  of  selective  in- 
terest, admiration,  prestige,  is  obvious  before  the  end 
of  the  second  year.  By  that  time  a  child  already 
cares  much  for  the  reflection  of  himself  upon  one  per- 
sonality and  little  for  that  upon  another.  Moreover, 
he  soon  claims  intimate  and  tractable  persons  as 
mine,  classes  them  among  his  other  possessions,  and 
maintains  his  ownership  against  all  comers.  M.,  at 
three  years  of  age,  vigorously  resented  R.'s  claim  upon 
their  mother.  The  latter  was  "my  mamma,"  when- 
ever the  point  was  raised. 

Strong  joy  and  grief  depend  upon  the  treatment 
*  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  by  F.  Darwin,  p.  27. 
197 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

this  rudimentary  social  self  receives.  In  the  case  of 
M.  I  noticed  as  early  as  the  fourth  month  a  "hurt" 
way  of  crying  which  seemed  to  indicate  a  sense  of 
personal  slight.  It  was  quite  different  from  the  cry 
of  pain  or  that  of  anger,  but  seemed  about  the  same 
as  the  cry  of  fright.  The  slightest  tone  of  reproof 
would  produce  it.  On  the  other  hand,  if  people  took 
notice  and  laughed  and  encouraged,  she  was  hilarious. 
At  about  fifteen  months  old  she  had  become  "a  per- 
fect little  actress,"  seeming  to  live  largely  in  imagina- 
tions of  her  effect  upon  other  people.  She  constantly 
and  obviously  laid  traps  for  attention,  and  looked 
abashed  or  wept  at  any  signs  of  disapproval  or  indiffer- 
ence. At  times  it  would  seem  as  if  she  could  not  get 
over  these  repulses,  but  would  cry  long  in  a  grieved 
way,  refusing  to  be  comforted.  If  she  hit  upon  any 
little  trick  that  made  people  laugh  she  would  be  sure 
to  repeat  it,  laughing  loudly  and  affectedly  in  imita- 
tion. She  had  quite  a  repertory  of  these  small  per- 
formances, which  she  would  display  to  a  sympathetic 
audience,  or  even  try  upon  strangers.  I  have  seen  her 
at  sixteen  months,  when  R.  refused  to  give  her  the 
scissors,  sit  down  and  make-believe  cry,  putting  up 
her  under  lip  and  snuffling,  meanwhile  looking  up  now 
and  then  to  see  what  effect  she  was  producing.* 

In  such  phenomena  we  have  plainly  enough,  it 
seems  to  me,  the  germ  of  personal  ambition  of  every 
sort.     Imagination  co-operating  with  instinctive  self- 

*  This  sort  of  thing  is  very  familiar  to  observers  of  children. 
See,  for  instance,  Miss  Shinn's  Notes  on  the  Development  of 
a  Child,  p.  153. 

198 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

feeling  has  already  created  a  social  "I,"  and  this  has 
become  a  principal  object  of  interest  and  endeavor. 

Progress  from  this  point  is  chiefly  in  the  way  of  a 
greater  definiteness,  fulness,  and  inwardness  in  the 
imagination  of  the  other's  state  of  mind.  A  little 
child  thinks  of  and  tries  to  elicit  certain  visible  or 
audible  phenomena,  and  does  not  go  back  of  them; 
but  what  a  grown-up  person  desires  to  produce  in 
others  is  an  internal,  invisible  condition  which  his  own 
richer  experience  enables  him  to  imagine,  and  of 
which  expression  is  only  the  sign.  Even  adults,  how- 
ever, make  no  separation  between  what  other  people 
think  and  the  visible  expression  of  that  thought. 
They  imagine  the  whole  thing  at  once,  and  their  idea 
differs  from  that  of  a  child  chiefly  in  the  comparative 
richness  and  complexity  of  the  elements  that  accom- 
pany and  interpret  the  visible  or  audible  sign.  There 
is  also  a  progress  from  the  naive  to  the  subtle  in  so- 
cially self-assertive  action.  A  child  obviously  and 
simply,  at  first,  does  things  for  effect.  Later  there  is 
an  endeavor  to  suppress  the  appearance  of  doing  so; 
affection,  indifference,  contempt,  etc.,  are  simulated 
to  hide  the  real  wish  to  affect  the  self-image.  It  is 
perceived  that  an  obvious  seeking  after  good  opinion 
is  weak  and  disagreeable. 

I  doubt  whether  there  are  any  regular  stages  in  the 
development  of  social  self-feeling  and  expression  com- 
mon to  the  majority  of  children.  The  sentiments  of 
self  develop  by  imperceptible  gradations  out  of  the 
crude  appropriative  instinct  of  new-born  babes,  and 
their  manifestations  vary  indefinitely  in  different  cases. 

199 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Many  children  show  "self-consciousness"  conspicu- 
ously from  the  first  half-year;  others  have  little  ap- 
pearance of  it  at  any  age.  Still  others  pass  through 
periods  of  affectation  whose  length  and  time  of  occur- 
rence would  probably  be  found  to  be  exceedingly  va- 
rious. In  childhood,  as  at  all  times  of  life,  absorp- 
tion in  some  idea  other  than  that  of  the  social  self 
tends  to  drive  "self -consciousness"  out. 

Nearly  every  one,  however,  whose  turn  of  mind  is  at 
all  imaginative  goes  through  a  season  of  passionate 
self-feeling  during  adolescence,  when,  according  to 
current  belief,  the  social  impulses  are  stimulated  in 
connection  with  the  rapid  development  of  the  func- 
tions of  sex.  This  is  a  time  of  hero-worship,  of  high 
resolve,  of  impassioned  revery,  of  vague  but  fierce 
ambition,  of  strenuous  imitation  that  seems  affected, 
of  gene  in  the  presence  of  the  other  sex  or  of  superior 
persons,  and  so  on. 

Many  autobiographies  describe  the  social  self-feeling 
of  youth  which,  in  the  case  of  strenuous,  suscepti- 
ble natures,  prevented  by  weak  health  or  uncongenial 
surroundings  from  gaining  the  sort  of  success  proper 
to  that  age,  often  attains  extreme  intensity.  This  is 
quite  generally  the  case  with  the  youth  of  men  of 
genius,  whose  exceptional  endowment  and  tendencies 
usually  isolate  them  more  or  less  from  the  ordinary 
life  about  them.  In  the  autobiography  of  John  Ad- 
dington  Symonds  we  have  an  account  of  the  feelings 
of  an  ambitious  boy  suffering  from  ill-health,  plain- 
ness of  feature — peculiarly  mortifying  to  his  strong 

200 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

aesthetic  instincts — and  mental  backwardness.  "I  al- 
most resented  the  attentions  paid  me  as  my  father's 
son,  ...  I  regarded  them  as  acts  of  charitable  con- 
descension. Thus  I  passed  into  an  attitude  of  haughty 
shyness  which  had  nothing  respectable  in  it  except 
a  sort  of  self-reliant,  world-defiant  pride,  a  resolution 
to  effectuate  myself,  and  to  win  what  I  wanted  by 
my  exertions.  ...  I  vowed  to  raise  myself  some- 
how or  other  to  eminence  of  some  sort.  ...  I  felt 
no  desire  for  wealth,  no  mere  wish  to  cut  a  figure  in 
society.  But  I  thirsted  with  intolerable  thirst  for 
eminence,  for  recognition  as  a  personality.*  .  .  .  The 
main  thing  which  sustained  me  was  a  sense  of  self — 
imperious,  antagonistic,  unmalleable.f  .  .  .  My  ex- 
ternal self  in  these  many  ways  was  being  perpetually 
snubbed,  and  crushed,  and  mortified.  Yet  the  inner 
self  hardened  after  a  dumb,  blind  fashion.  I  kept 
repeating,  'Wait,  wait.  I  will,  I  shall,  I  must.'"  X 
At  Oxford  he  overhears  a  conversation  in  which  his 
abilities  are  depreciated  and  it  is  predicted  that  he 
will  not  get  his  "first."  "The  sting  of  it  remained 
in  me;  and  though  I  cared  little  enough  for  first  classes, 
I  then  and  there  resolved  that  I  would  win  the  best 
first  of  my  year.  This  kind  of  grit  in  me  has  to  be 
notified.  Nothing  aroused  it  so  much  as  a  seeming 
slight,  exciting  my  rebellious  manhood."  §  Again  he 
exclaims,  "I  look  round  me  and  find  nothing  in  which 
I  excel."  ||  .  .  .     "I  fret  because  I  do  not  realize  am- 

*  John  Addington  Symonds,  by  H.  F.  Brown,  vol.  i,  p.  63. 
t  P.  70.  t  P.  74. 

$  P.  120.  II  P.  125. 

201 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

bition,  because  I  have  no  active  work,  and  cannot 
win  a  position  of  importance  like  other  men."  * 

This  sort  of  thing  is  familiar  in  literature,  and  very 
likely  in  our  own  experience.  It  seems  worth  while 
to  recall  it  and  to  point  out  that  this  primal  need  of 
self-effectuation,  to  adopt  Mr.  Symonds's  phrase,  is 
the  essence  of  ambition,  and  always  has  for  its  object 
the  production  of  some  effect  upon  the  minds  of  other 
people.  We  feel  in  the  quotations  above  the  indomi- 
table surging  up  of  the  individualizing,  militant  force 
of  which  self-feeling  seems  to  be  the  organ. 

Sex-difference  in  the  development  of  the  social  self 
is  apparent  from  the  first.  Girls  have,  as  a  rule,  a 
more  impressible  social  sensibility;  they  care  more 
obviously  for  the  social  image,  study  it,  reflect  upon 
it  more,  and  so  have  even  during  the  first  year  an  ap- 
pearance of  subtlety,  finesse,  often  of  affectation,  in 
which  boys  are  comparatively  lacking.  Boys  are 
more  taken  up  with  muscular  activity  for  its  own  sake 
and  with  construction,  their  imaginations  are  occupied 
somewhat  less  with  persons  and  more  with  things. 
In  a  girl  das  ewig  Weibliche,  not  easy  to  describe  but 
quite  unmistakable,  appears  as  soon  as  she  begins  to 
take  notice  of  people,  and  one  phase  of  it  is  certainly 
an  ego  less  simple  and  stable,  a  stronger  impulse  to 
go  over  to  the  other  person's  point  of  view  and  to 
stake  joy  and  grief  on  the  image  in  his  mind.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  women  are  as  a  rule  more  de- 
pendent upon  immediate  personal  support  and  cor- 
*  P.  348. 
202 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

roboration  than  are  men.  The  thought  of  the  woman 
needs  to  fix  itself  upon  some  person  in  whose  mind  1 
she  can  find  a  stable  and  compelling  image  of  herself  / 
by  which  to  live.  If  such  an  image  is  found,  either  in 
a  visible  or  an  ideal  person,  the  power  of  devotion  to 
it  becomes  a  source  of  strength.  But  it  is  a  sort  of 
strength  dependent  upon  this  personal  complement, 
without  which  the  womanly  character  is  somewhat 
apt  to  become  a  derelict  and  drifting  vessel.  Men, 
being  built  more  for  aggression,  have,  relatively,  a 
greater  power  of  standing  alone.  But  no  one  can 
really  stand  alone,  and  the  appearance  of  it  is  due 
simply  to  a  greater  momentum  and  continuity  of 
character  which  stores  up  the  past  and  resists  imme- 
diate influences.  Directly  or  indirectly  the  imagina- 
tion of  how  we  appear  to  others  is  a  controlling  force 
in  all  normal  minds. 

The  vague  but  potent  phases  of  the  self  associated 
with  the  instinct  of  sex  may  be  regarded,  like  other 
phases,  as  expressive  of  a  need  to  exert  power  and  as 
having  reference  to  personal  function.  The  youth,  I 
take  it,  is  bashful  precisely  because  he  is  conscious  of 
the  vague  stirring  of  an  aggressive  instinct  which  he 
does  not  know  how  either  to  effectuate  or  to  ignore. 
And  it  is  perhaps  much  the  same  with  the  other  sex: 
the  bashful  are  always  aggressive  at  heart;  they  are 
conscious  of  an  interest  in  the  other  person,  of  a  need 
to  be  something  to  him.  And  the  more  developed 
sexual  passion,  in  both  sexes,  is  very  largely  an  emo- 
tion of  power,  domination,  or  appropriation.  There 
is  no  state  of  feeling  that  says  "mine,  mine,"  more 

203 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

fiercely.  The  need  to  be  appropriated  or  dominated 
which,  in  women  at  least,  is  equally  powerful,  is  of  the 
same  nature  at  bottom,  having  for  its  object  the  at- 
tracting to  itself  of  a  masterful  passion.  "The  de- 
sire of  the  man  is  for  the  woman,  but  the  desire  of  the 
woman  is  for  the  desire  of  the  man."  * 

Although  boys  have  generally  a  less  impressionable 
social  self  than  girls,  there  is  great  difference  among 
them  in  this  regard.  Some  of  them  have  a  marked 
tendency  to  finesse  and  posing,  while  others  have  al- 
most none.  The  latter  have  a  less  vivid  personal 
imagination;  they  are  unaffected  chiefly,  perhaps,  be- 
cause they  have  no  vivid  idea  of  how  they  seem  to 
others,  and  so  are  not  moved  to  seem  rather  than  to 
be;  they  are  unresentful  of  slights  because  they  do 
not  feel  them,  not  ashamed  or  jealous  or  vain  or  proud 
or  remorseful,  because  all  these  imply  imagination  of 
another's  mind.  I  have  known  children  who  showed 
no  tendency  whatever  to  lie;  in  fact,  could  not  under- 
stand the  nature  or  object  of  lying  or  of  any  sort  of 
concealment,  as  in  such  games  as  hide-and-coop.  This 
excessively  simple  way  of  looking  at  things  may  come 
from  unusual  absorption  in  the  observation  and  analy- 
sis of  the  impersonal,  as  appeared  to  be  the  case  with 
R.,  whose  interest  in  other  facts  and  their  relations 
so  much  preponderated  over  his  interest  in  personal 
attitudes  that  there  was  no  temptation  to  sacrifice  the 
former  to  the  latter.  A  child  of  this  sort  gives  the 
impression  of  being  non-moral;  he  neither  sins  nor 
*  Attributed  to  Mme.  de  Stael. 
204 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

repents,  and  has  not  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil. 
We  eat  of  the  tree  of  this  knowledge  when  we  begin 
to  imagine  the  minds  of  others,  and  so  become  aware 
of  that  conflict  of  personal  impulses  which  conscience 
aims  to  allay. 

Simplicity  is  a  pleasant  thing  in  children,  or  at  any 
age,  but  it  is  not  necessarily  admirable,  nor  is  affec- 
tation altogether  a  thing  of  evil.  To  be  normal,  to 
be  at  home  in  the  world,  with  a  prospect  of  power, 
usefulness,  or  success,  the  person  must  have  that 
imaginative  insight  into  other  minds  that  underlies 
tact  and  savoir-faire,  morality  and  beneficence.  This 
insight  involves  sophistication,  some  understanding 
and  sharing  of  the  clandestine  impulses  of  human  na- 
ture. A  simplicity  that  is  merely  the  lack  of  this  in- 
sight indicates  a  sort  of  defect.  There  is,  however, 
another  kind  of  simplicity,  belonging  to  a  character 
that  is  subtle  and  sensitive,  but  has  sufficient  force 
and  mental  clearness  to  keep  in  strict  order  the  many 
impulses  to  which  it  is  open,  and  so  preserve  its  di- 
rectness and  unity.  One  may  be  simple  like  Simple 
Simon,  or  in  the  sense  that  Emerson  meant  when  he 
said,  "To  be  simple  is  to  be  great."  Affectation, 
vanity,  and  the  like,  indicate  the  lack  of  proper  as- 
similation of  the  influences  arising  from  our  sense  of 
what  others  think  of  us.  Instead  of  these  influences 
working  upon  the  individual  gradually  and  without 
disturbing  his  equilibrium,  they  overbear  him  so  that 
he  appears  to  be  not  himself,  posing,  out  of  function, 
and  hence  silly,  weak,  contemptible.  The  affected 
smile,  the  "foolish  face  of  praise"  is  a  type  of  all  affec- 

205 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tation,  an  external,  put-on  thing,  a  weak  and  fatuous 
petition  for  approval.  Whenever  one  is  growing  rap- 
idly, learning  eagerly,  preoccupied  with  strange  ideals, 
he  is  in  danger  of  this  loss  of  equilibrium;  and  so  we 
notice  it  in  sensitive  children,  especially  girls,  in  young 
people  between  fourteen  and  twenty,  and  at  all  ages 
in  persons  of  unstable  individuality. 

This  disturbance  of  our  equilibrium  by  the  out- 
going of  the  imagination  toward  another  person's 
point  of  view  means  that  we  are  undergoing  his  in- 
fluence. In  the  presence  of  one  whom  we  feel  to  be 
of  importance  there  is  a  tendency  to  enter  into  and 
adopt,  by  sympathy,  his  judgment  of  ourself,  to  put 
a  new  value  on  ideas  and  purposes,  to  recast  life  in 
his  image.  With  a  very  sensitive  person  this  tendency 
is  often  evident  to  others  in  ordinary  conversation 
and  in  trivial  matters.  By  force  of  an  impulse  spring- 
ing directly  from  the  delicacy  of  his  perceptions  he 
is  continually  imagining  how  he  appears  to  his  inter- 
locutor, and  accepting  the  image,  for  the  moment, 
as  himself.  If  the  other  appears  to  think  him  well- 
informed  on  some  recondite  matter,  he  is  likely  to 
assume  a  learned  expression;  if  thought  judicious  he 
looks  as  if  he  were,  if  accused  of  dishonesty  he  ap- 
pears guilty,  and  so  on.  In  short,  a  sensitive  man, 
in  the  presence  of  an  impressive  personality,  tends  to 
become,  for  the  time,  his  interpretation  of  what  the 
other  thinks  he  is.  It  is  only  the  heavy-minded  who 
will  not  feel  this  to  be  true,  in  some  degree,  of  them- 
selves. Of  course  it  is  usually  a  temporary  and  some- 
what superficial  phenomenon;  but  it  is  typical  of  all 

206 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

ascendancy,  and  helps  us  to  understand  how  persons 
have  power  over  us  through  some  hold  upon  our  im- 
aginations, and  how  our  personality  grows  and  takes 
form  by  divining  the  appearance  of  our  present  self 
to  other  minds. 

So  long  as  a  character  is  open  and  capable  of  growth 
it  retains  a  corresponding  impressibility,  which  is  not 
weakness  unless  it  swamps  the  assimilating  and  or- 
ganizing faculty.  I  know  men  whose  careers  are  a 
proof  of  stable  and  aggressive  character  who  have  an 
almost  feminine  sensitiveness  regarding  their  seeming 
to  others.  Indeed,  if  one  sees  a  man  whose  attitude 
toward  others  is  always  assertive,  never  receptive,  he 
may  be  confident  that  man  will  never  go  far,  because 
he  will  never  learn  much.  In  character,  as  in  every 
phase  of  life,  health  requires  a  just  union  of  stability 
with  plasticity. 

There  is  a  vague  excitement  of  the  social  self  more 
general  than  any  particular  emotion  or  sentiment. 
Thus  the  mere  presence  of  people,  a  "sense  of  other 
persons,"  as  Professor  Baldwin  says,  and  an  aware- 
ness of  their  observation,  often  causes  a  vague  dis- 
comfort, doubt,  and  tension.  One  feels  that  there  is 
a  social  image  of  himself  lurking  about,  and  not  know- 
ing what  it  is  he  is  obscurely  alarmed.  Many  people, 
perhaps  most,  feel  more  or  less  agitation  and  embar- 
rassment under  the  observation  of  strangers,  and  for 
some  even  sitting  in  the  same  room  with  unfamiliar 
or  uncongenial  people  is  harassing  and  exhausting. 
It  is  well  known,  for  instance,  that  a  visit  from  a 
stranger  would  often  cost  Darwin  his  night's  sleep, 

207 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  many  similar  examples  could  be  collected  from 
the  records  of  men  of  letters.  At  this  point,  however, 
it  is  evident  that  we  approach  the  borders  of  mental 
pathology. 

Possibly  some  will  think  that  I  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  social  self-feeling  by  taking  persons  and 
periods  of  life  that  are  abnormally  sensitive.  But  I 
believe  that  with  all  normal  and  human  people  it  re- 
mains, in  one  form  or  another,  the  mainspring  of  en- 
deavor and  a  chief  interest  of  the  imagination  through- 
out life.  As  is  the  case  with  other  feelings,  we  do  not 
think  much  of  it  so  long  as  it  is  moderately  and  regu- 
larly gratified.  Many  people  of  balanced  mind  and 
congenial  activity  scarcely  know  that  they  care  what 
others  think  of  them,  and  will  deny,  perhaps  with  in- 
dignation, that  such  care  is  an  important  factor  in 
what  they  are  and  do.  But  this  is  illusion.  If  fail- 
ure or  disgrace  arrives,  if  one  suddenly  finds  that  the 
faces  of  men  show  coldness  or  contempt  instead  of  the 
kindliness  and  deference  that  he  is  used  to,  he  will 
perceive  from  the  shock,  the  fear,  the  sense  of  being 
outcast  and  helpless,  that  he  was  living  in  the  minds 
of  others  without  knowing  it,  just  as  we  daily  walk 
the  solid  ground  without  thinking  how  it  bears  us  up. 
This  fact  is  so  familiar  in  literature,  especially  in  mod- 
ern novels,  that  it  ought  to  be  obvious  enough.  The 
works  of  George  Eliot  are  particularly  strong  in  the 
exposition  of  it.  In  most  of  her  novels  there  is  some 
character  like  Mr.  Bulstrode  in  "Middlemarch"  or  Mr. 
Jermyn  in  "Felix  Holt,"  whose  respectable  and  long- 

208 


THE  MEANING  OF  "I" 

established  social  image  of  himself  is  shattered  by  the 
coming  to  light  of  hidden  truth. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  \the  attempt  to  describe 
the  social  self  and  to  analyze  the  mental  processes  that 
enter  into  it  almost  unavoidably  makes  it  appear  more 
reflective  and  "self-conscious"  than  it  usually  is.) 
Thus  while  some  readers  will  be  able  to  discover  in 
themselves  a  quite  definite  and  deliberate  contempla- 
tion of  the  reflected  self,  others  will  perhaps  find 
nothing  but  a  sympathetic  impulse,  so  simple  that  it 
can  hardly  be  made  the  object  of  distinct  thought. 
Many  people  whose  behavior  shows  that  their  idea 
of  themselves  is  largely  caught  from  the  persons  they 
are  with,  are  yet  quite  innocent  of  any  intentional 
posing;  it  is  a  matter  of  subconscious  impulse  or  mere 
suggestion.  The  self  of  very  sensitive  but  non-reflec- 
tive minds  is  of  this  character. 

The  group  self  or  "we"  is  simply  an  "I"  which 
includes  other  persons.  One  identifies  himself  with  a 
group  and  speaks  of  the  common  will,  opinion,  service, 
or  the  like  in  terms  of  "we"  and  "us."  The  sense 
of  it  is  stimulated  by  co-operation  within  and  opposi- 
tion without.  A  family  that  has  had  to  struggle  with 
economic  difficulties  usually  develops  solidarity — "We 
paid  off  the  mortgage,"  "We  sent  the  boys  to  college," 
and  the  like.  A  student  identifies  himself  with  his 
class  or  his  university  when  it  is  performing  a  social 
function  of  some  kind,  especially  when  it  is  contend- 
ing in  games  with  other  classes  or  institutions.  "We 
won  the  tug  of  war,"  he  says,  or  "We  beat  Wisconsin 

209 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

at  football."  Those  of  us  who  remained  at  home 
during  the  Great  War  nevertheless  tell  how  "we" 
entered  the  war  in  1917,  how  "we"  fought  decisively 
in  the  Argonne,  and  so  on. 

It  is  notable  that  the  national  self,  indeed  any  group 
self,  can  be  felt  only  in  relation  to  a  larger  society, 
just  as  the  individual  self  is  felt  only  in  relation  to 
other  individuals.  We  could  have  no  patriotism  un- 
less we  were  aware  of  other  nations,  and  the  effect  of 
a  definitely  organized  society  of  nations,  in  whose 
activities  we  all  took  a  generous  interest,  would  be, 
not  to  diminish  patriotism,  as  some  have  unintelli- 
gently  asserted,  but  to  raise  its  character,  to  make  it 
more  vivid,  continuous,  varied,  and  sympathetic.  It 
would  be  like  the  self-consciousness  of  an  intelligent 
individual  in  constant  and  friendly  intercourse  with 
others,  as  contrasted  with  the  brutal  self-assertion  of 
one  who  knows  his  fellows  only  as  objects  of  suspicion 
and  hostility.  The  patriotism  of  the  past  has  been  of 
the  latter  kind,  and  we  have  hardly  considered  its 
higher  possibilities.  The  national  "we"  can  and 
should  be  a  self  of  real  honor,  service,  and  humane 
aspiration. 


210 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SOCIAL  SELF— 2.  VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

i 

EGOTISM  AND  SELFISHNESS — THE  USE  OP  "i"  IN  LITERATURE 
AND  CONVERSATION — INTENSE  SELF-FEELING  NECESSARY  TO 
PRODUCTIVITY OTHER    PHASES    OF    THE    SOCIAL    SELF" — PRIDE 

versus    vanity — self-respect,     honor,     self-reverence — > 

HUMILITY — MALADIES  OF  THE  SOCIAL  SELF — WITHDRAWAL — ■ 
SELF-TRANSFORMATION — PHASES  OF  THE  SELF  CAUSED  BY  IN- 
CONGRUITY BETWEEN  THE  PERSON  AND  HIS  SURROUNDINGS — 
THE  SELF  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

If  self  and  the  self-seeking  that  springs  from  it  are 
healthy  and  respectable  traits  of  human  nature,  then 
what  are  those  things  which  we  call  egotism  and  self- 
ishness,* and  which  are  so  commonly  regarded  as 
objectionable?  The  answer  to  this  appears  to  be 
that  it  is  not  self-assertion  as  such  that  we  stigmatize 
by  these  names,  but  the  assertion  of  a  kind  or  phase 
of  self  that  is  obnoxious  to  us.  So  long  as  we  agree 
with  a  man's  thoughts  and  aims  we  do  not  think  of 
him  as  selfish  or  egotistical,  however  urgently  he  may 
assert  them;  but  so  soon  as  we  cease  to  agree,  while 
he  continues  persistent  and  perhaps  intrusive,  we  are 
likely  to  say  hard  things  about  him.  It  is  at  bottom 
a  matter  of  moral  judgment,  not  to  be  comprised  in 
any  simple  definition,  but  to  be  determined  by  con- 
science after  the  whole  situation  is  taken  into  account. 

*  I  do  not  attempt  to  distinguish  between  these  words,  though 
there  is  a  difference,  ill  defined  however,  in  their  meanings.  As 
ordinarily  used  both  designate  a  phase  of  self-assertion  regarded 
as  censurable,  and  this  is  all  I  mean  by  either. 

211 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

In  this  regard  it  is  essentially  one  with  the  more  gen- 
eral question  of  misconduct  or  personal  badness. 
There  is  no  distinct  line  between  the  behavior  which 
we  mildly  censure  as  selfish  and  that  which  we  call 
wicked  or  criminal;  it  is  only  a  matter  of  degree. 

It  is  quite  apparent  that  mere  self-assertion  is  not 
looked  upon  as  selfishness.  There  is  nothing  more 
respected — and  even  liked — than  a  persistent  and  suc- 
cessful pursuit  of  one's  peculiar  aims,  so  long  as  this 
is  done  within  the  accepted  limits  of  fairness  and 
consideration  for  others.  Thus  one  who  has  acquired 
ten  millions  must  have  expressed  his  appropriative 
instinct  with  much  energy  and  constancy,  but  reason- 
able people  do  not  conclude  that  he  is  selfish  unless 
it  appears  that  he  has  ignored  social  sentiments  by 
which  he  should  have  been  guided.  If  he  has  been 
dishonest,  mean,  hard,  or  the  like,  they  will  condemn 
him. 

The  men  we  admire  most,  including  those  we  look 
upon  as  peculiarly  good,  are  invariably  men  of  nota- 
ble self-assertion.  Thus  Martin  Luther,  to  take  a 
conspicuous  instance,  was  a  man  of  the  most  intense 
self-feeling,  resentful  of  opposition,  dogmatic,  with 
"an  absolute  confidence  in  the  infallibility,  practically 
speaking,  of  his  own  judgment."  This  is  a  trait  be- 
longing to  nearly  all  great  leaders,  and  a  main  cause 
of  their  success.  That  which  distinguishes  Luther 
from  the  vulgarly  ambitious  and  aggressive  people 
we  know  is  not  the  quality  of  his  self-feeling,  but  the 
fact  that  it  was  identified  in  his  imagination  and  en- 
deavors with  sentiments  and  purposes  that  we  look 

212 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

upon  as  noble,  progressive,  or  right.  No  one  could 
be  more  ambitious  than  he  was,  or  more  determined 
to  secure  the  social  aggrandizement  of  his  self;  but  in 
his  case  the  self  for  which  he  was  ambitious  and  re- 
sentful consisted  largely  of  certain  convictions  regard- 
ing justification  by  faith,  the  sacrilege  of  the  sale  of 
indulgences,  and,  more  generally,  of  an  enfranchising 
spirit  and  mode  of  thought  fit  to  awaken  and  lead  the 
aspiration  of  the  time. 

It  is  evident  enough  that  in  this  respect  Luther  is 
typical  of  aggressive  reformers  in  our  own  and  every 
other  time.  Does  not  every  efficient  clergyman,  phi- 
lanthropist, or  teacher  become  such  by  identifying 
some  worthy  object  with  a  vigorous  self -feeling?  Is 
it  ever  really  possible  to  separate  the  feeling  for  the 
cause  from  the  feeling  that  it  is  my  cause?  I  doubt 
whether  it  is.  Some  of  the  greatest  and  purest  found- 
ers and  propagators  of  religion  have  been  among  the 
greatest  egotists  in  the  sense  that  they  openly  iden- 
tified the  idea  of  good  with  the  idea  of  self,  and  spoke 
of  the  two  interchangeably.  And  I  cannot  think  of 
any  strong  man  I  have  known,  however  good,  who 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  have  had  intense  self-feeling 
about  his  cherished  affair;  though  if  his  affair  was  a 
large  and  helpful  one  no  one  would  call  him  selfish. 

Since  the  judgment  that  a  man  is  or  is  not  selfish 
is  a  question  of  sympathies,  it  naturally  follows  that 
people  easily  disagree  regarding  it,  their  views  de- 
pending much  upon  their  temperaments  and  habits  of 
thought.  There  are  probably  few  energetic  persons 
who  do  not  make  an  impression  of  egotism  upon  some 

213 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  their  acquaintances;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  how 
many  there  are  whose  selfishness  seems  obvious  to 
most  people,  but  is  not  apparent  to  their  wives,  sis- 
ters, and  mothers.  In  so  far  as  our  self  is  identified 
with  that  of  another  it  is,  of  course,  unlikely  that  the 
aims  of  the  latter  should  be  obnoxious  to  us. 

If  we  should  question  many  persons  as  to  why  they 
thought  this  or  that  man  selfish,  a  common  answer 
would  probably  be,  "He  does  not  consider  other 
people."  What  this  means  is  that  he  is  inappreciative 
of  the  social  situation  as  we  see  it;  that  the  situation 
does  not  awaken  in  him  the  same  personal  sentiments 
that  it  does  in  us,  and  so  his  action  wounds  those  sen- 
timents. Thus  the  commonest  and  most  obvious  form 
of  selfishness  is  perhaps  the  failure  to  subordinate 
sensual  impulses  to  social  feeling,  and  this,  of  course, 
results  from  the  apathy  of  the  imaginative  impulses 
that  ought  to  effect  this  subordination.  It  would 
usually  be  impossible  for  a  man  to  help  himself  to  the 
best  pieces  on  the  platter  if  he  conceived  the  disgust 
and  resentment  which  he  excites.  And,  though  this 
is  a  very  gross  and  palpable  sort  of  selfishness,  it  is 
analogous  in  nature  to  the  finer  kinds.  A  fine-grained, 
subtle  Egoist,  such  as  is  portrayed  in  George  Mere- 
dith's novel  of  that  name,  or  such  as  Isabel's  husband 
in  Henry  James's  "Portrait  of  a  Lady,"  has  delicate 
perceptions  in  certain  directions,  but  along  with  these 
there  is  some  essential  narrowness  or  vulgarity  of 
imagination  which  prevents  him  from  grasping  what 
we  feel  to  be  the  true  social  situation,  and  having  the 
sentiments  that  should  respond  to  it.     The  aesthetic 

214 


VARIOUS   PHASES  OF  "I" 

refinement  of  Osmond  which  so  impresses  Isabel  be- 
fore her  marriage  turns  out  to  be  compatible  with  a 
general  smallness  of  mind.  He  is  "not  a  good  fellow," 
as  Ralph  remarks,  and  incapable  of  comprehending 
her  or  her  friends. 

A  lack  of  tact  in  face-to-face  intercourse  very  com- 
monly gives  an  impression  of  egotism,  even  when  it 
is  a  superficial  trait  not  really  expressive  of  an  unsym- 
pathetic character.  Thus  there  are  persons  who  in 
the  simplest  conversation  do  not  seem  to  forget  them- 
selves, and  enter  frankly  and  disinterestedly  into  the 
subject,  but  are  felt  to  be  always  preoccupied  with 
the  thought  of  the  impression  they  are  making,  imagin- 
ing praise  or  depreciation,  and  usually  posing  a  little 
to  avoid  the  one  or  gain  the  other.  Such  people  are 
uneasy,  and  make  others  so;  no  relaxation  is  possible 
in  their  company,  because  they  never  come  altogether 
out  into  open  and  common  ground,  but  are  always 
keeping  back  something.  It  is  not  so  much  that  they 
have  self -feeling  as  that  it  is  clandestine  and  furtive, 
giving  one  a  sense  of  insecurity.  Sometimes  they  are 
aware  of  this  lack  of  frankness,  and  try  to  offset  it  by 
reckless  confessions,  but  this  only  shows  their  self- 
consciousness  in  another  and  hardly  more  agreeable 
aspect.  Perhaps  the  only  cure  for  this  sort  of  egotism 
is  to  cherish  very  high  and  difficult  ambitions,  and  so 
drain  off  the  superabundance  of  self-feeling  from  these 
petty  channels.  People  who  are  doing  really  impor- 
tant things  usually  appear  simple  and  unaffected  in 
conversation,  largely  because  their  selves  are  health- 
fully employed  elsewhere. 

215 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

One  who  has  tact  always  sees  far  enough  intothe 
state  of  mind  of  the  person  with  whom  he  is  conversing 
to  adapt  himself  to  it  and  to  seem,  at  least,  sympa- 
thetic; he  is  sure  to  feel  the  situation.  But  if  you 
tread  upon  the  other  person's  toes,  talk  about  your- 
self when  he  is  not  interested  in  that  subject,  and,  in 
general,  show  yourself  out  of  touch  with  his  mind,  he 
very  naturally  finds  you  disagreeable.  And  behavior 
analogous  to  this  in  the  more  enduring  relations  of 
life  gives  rise  to  a  similar  judgment. 

So  far  as  there  is  any  agreement  in  judgments  re- 
garding selfishness  it  arises  from  common  standards 
of  right,  fairness,  and  courtesy  which  all  thoughtful 
minds  work  out  from  their  experience,  and  which  rep- 
resent what  the  general  good  requires.  The  selfish 
man  is  one  in  whose  self,  or  in  whose  style  of  asserting 
it,  is  something  that  falls  below  these  standards.  He 
is  a  transgressor  of  fair  play  and  the  rules  of  the  game, 
an  outlaw  with  whom  no  one  ought  to  sympathize, 
but  against  whom  all  should  unite  for  the  general  good. 

It  is  the  unhealthy  or  egotistical  self  that  is  usually 
meant  by  the  word  self  when  used  in  moral  discussions; 
it  is  this  that  people  need  to  get  away  from,  both  for 
their  own  good  and  that  of  the  community.  When 
we  speak  of  getting  out  of  one's  "self"  we  commonly 
mean  any  line  of  thought  with  which  one  tends  to  be 
unduly  preoccupied ;  so  that  to  escape  from  it  is  indeed 
a  kind  of  salvation. 

There  is  perhaps  no  sort  of  self  more  subject  to  dan- 
gerous egotism  than  that  which  deludes  itself  with 
the  notion  that  it  is  not  a  self  at  all,  but  something 

216 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

else.  It  is  well  to  beware  of  persons  who  believe  that 
the  cause,  the  mission,  the  philanthropy,  the  hero,  or 
whatever  it  may  be  that  they  strive  for,  is  outside  of 
themselves,  so  that  they  feel  a  certain  irresponsibility, 
and  are  likely  to  do  things  which  they  would  recognize 
as  wrong  if  done  in  behalf  of  an  acknowledged  self. 
Just  as  the  Spanish  armies  in  the  Netherlands  held 
that  their  indulgence  in  murder,  torture,  and  brutal 
lust  was  sanctified  by  the  supposed  holy  character  of 
their  mission,  so  in  our  own  time  the  name  of  religion, 
science,  patriotism,  or  charity  sometimes  enables  peo- 
ple to  indulge  comfortably  in  browbeating,  intrusion, 
slander,  dishonesty,  and  the  like.  Every  cherished  idea 
is  a  self:  and,  though  it  appear  to  the  individual,  or  to 
a  class,  or  to  a  whole  nation,  worthy  to  swallow  up 
all  other  selves,  it  is  subject  to  the  same  need  of  disci- 
pline under  rules  of  justice  and  decency  as  any  other. 
It  is  healthy  for  every  one  to  understand  that  he  is, 
and  will  remain,  a  self-seeker,  and  that  if  he  gets  out 
of  one  self  he  is  sure  to  form  another  which  may  stand 
in  equal  need  of  control. 

Selfishness  as  a  mental  trait  is  always  some  sort  of 
narrowness,  littleness,  or  defect;  an  inadequacy  of 
imagination.  The  perfectly  balanced  and  vigorous 
mind  can  hardly  be  selfish,  because  it  cannot  be  ob- 
livious to  any  important  social  situation,  either  in  im- 
mediate intercourse  or  in  more  permanent  relations; 
it  must  always  tend  to  be  sympathetic,  fair,  and  just, 
because  it  possesses  that  breadth  and  unity  of  view  of 
which  these  qualities  are  the  natural  expression.  To 
lack  them  is  to  be  not  altogether  social  and  human, 

217 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  may  be  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  degeneracy. 
Egotism  is  then  not  something  additional  to  ordinary 
human  nature,  as  the  common  way  of  speaking  sug- 
gests, but  rather  a  lack.  The  egotist  is  not  more  than 
a  man,  but  less  than  a  man;  and  as  regards  personal 
power  he  is  as  a  rule  the  weaker  for  his  egotism.  The 
very  fact  that  he  has  a  bad  name  shows  that  the  world 
is  against  him,  and  that  he  is  contending  against  odds. 
The  success  of  selfishness  attracts  attention  and  exag- 
geration because  it  is  hateful  to  us;  but  the  really 
strong  generally  work  within  the  prevalent  standards 
of  justice  and  courtesy,  and  so  escape  condemna- 
tion. 

There  is  infinite  variety  in  egotism;  but  an  impor- 
tant division  may  be  based  on  the  greater  or  less  sta- 
bility of  the  egotists'  characters.  According  to  this 
we  may  divide  them  into  those  of  the  unstable  type 
and  those  of  the  rigid  type  Extreme  instability  is 
always  selfish;  the  very  weak  cannot  be  otherwise, 
because  they  lack  both  the  deep  sympathy  that  en- 
ables people  to  penetrate  the  lives  of  others,  and  the 
consistency  and  self-control  necessary  to  make  sym- 
pathy effective  if  they  had  it.  Their  superficial  and 
fleeting  impulses  are  as  likely  to  work  harm  as  good 
and  cannot  be  trusted  to  bring  forth  any  sound  fruit. 
If  they  are  amiable  at  times  they  are  sure  to  be  harsh, 
cold,  or  violent  at  other  times;  there  is  no  justice,  no 
solid  good  or  worth  in  (hem  The  sort  of  people  I 
have  in  mind  are,  for  instance,  such  as  in  times  of  afflic- 
tion go  about  weeping  and  wringing  their  hands  to 
the  neglect  of  their  duty  to  aid  and  comfort  the  sur- 

218 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

vivors,   possibly   taking  credit  for  the    tenderness  of 
their  hearts. 

The  other  sort  of  egotism,  not  sharply  distinguished 
from  this  in  all  cases,  belongs  to  people  who  have 
stability  of  mind  and  conduct,  but  still  without  breadth 
and  richness  of  sympathy,  so  that  their  aims  and  senti- 
ments are  inadequate  to  the  life  around  them — narrow, 
hard,  mean,  self-satisfied,  or  sensual.  This  I  would 
call  the  rigid  type  of  egotism  because  the  essence  of 
it  is  an  arrest  of  sympathetic  development  and  an  ossi- 
fication as  it  were  of  what  should  be  a  plastic  and  grow- 
ing part  of  thought.  Something  of  this  sort  is  perhaps 
what  is  most  commonly  meant  by  the  word,  and  every 
one  can  think  of  harsh,  gross,  grasping,  cunning,  or 
self-complacent  traits  to  which  he  would  apply  it. 
The  self,  to  be  healthy  or  to  be  tolerable  to  other  selves, 
must  be  ever  moving  on,  breaking  loose  from  lower 
habits,  walking  hand-in-hand  with  sympathy  and 
aspiration.  If  it  stops  too  long  anywhere  it  becomes 
stagnant  and  diseased,  odious  to  other  minds  and 
harmful  to  the  mind  it  inhabits.  The  men  that  sat- 
isfy the  imagination  are  chastened  men;  large,  human, 
inclusive,  feeling  the  breadth  of  the  world.  It  is 
impossible  to  think  of  Shakespeare  as  arrogant,  vain, 
or  sensual;  and  if  some,  like  Dante,  had  an  exigent  ego, 
they  succeeded  in  transforming  it  into  higher  and 
higher  forms. 

Selfishness  of  the  stable  or  rigid  sort  is  as  a  rule 
more  bitterly  resented  than  the  more  fickle  variety, 
chiefly,  no  doubt,  because,  having  more  continuity  and 
purpose,  it  is  more  formidable. 

219 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

One  who  accepts  the  idea  of  self,  and  of  personality 
in  general,  already  set  forth,  will  agree  that  what  is 
ordinarily  called  egotism  cannot  properly  be  regarded 
as  the  opposite  of  "altruism,"  or  of  any  word  imply- 
ing the  self-and-other  classification  of  impulses.  No 
clear  or  useful  idea  of  selfishness  can  be  reached  on 
the  basis  of  this  classification,  which,  as  previously 
stated,  seems  to  me  fictitious.  It  misrepresents  the 
mental  situation,  and  so  tends  to  confuse  thought. 
The  mind  has  not,  in  fact,  two  sets  of  motives  to  choose 
from,  the  self-motives  and  the  other-motives,  the  lat- 
ter of  which  stand  for  the  higher  course,  but  has  the 
far  more  difficult  task  of  achieving  a  higher  life  by 
gradually  discriminating  and  organizing  a  great  vari- 
ety of  motives  not  easily  divisible  into  moral  groups. 
The  proper  antithesis  of  selfishness  is  right,  justice, 
breadth,  magnanimity,  or  something  of  that  sort; 
something  opposite  to  the  narrowness  of  feeling  and 
action  in  which  selfishness  essentially  consists.  It  is 
a  matter  of  more  or  less  symmetry  and  stature,  like 
the  contrast  between  a  gnarled  and  stunted  tree  and 
one  of  ample  growth. 

The  ideas  denoted  by  such  phrases  as  my  friend, 
my  country,  my  duty,  and  so  on,  are  just  the  ones 
that  stand  for  broad  or  "unselfish"  impulses,  and 
yet  they  are  self-ideas  as  shown  by  the  first-personal 
pronoun.  In  the  expression  "my  duty1'  we  have  in 
six  letters  a  refutation  of  that  way  of  thinking  which 
makes  right  the  opposite  of  self.  That  it  stands  for 
the  right  all  will  admit;  and  yet  no  one  can  pronounce 
it  meaningly  without  perceiving  that  it  is  charged 
with  intense  self-feeling. 

220 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

It  is  always  vain  to  try  to  separate  the  outer  aspect 
of  a  motive,  the  other  people,  the  cause  or  the  like, 
which  we  think  of  as  external,  from  the  private  or 
self  aspect,  which  we  think  of  as  internal.  The  ap- 
parent separation  is  purely  illusive.  It  is  surely  a 
very  simple  truth  that  what  makes  us  act  in  an  unself- 
ish or  devoted  manner  is  always  some  sort  of  senti- 
ment in  our  own  minds,  and  if  we  cherish  this  senti- 
ment intimately  it  is  a  part  of  ourselves.  We  develop 
the  inner  life  by  outwardly  directed  thought  and  ac- 
tion, relating  mostly  to  other  persons,  to  causes,  and 
the  like.  Is  there  no  difference,  then,  it  may  be  asked, 
between  doing  a  kind  act  to  please  some  one  else  and 
doing  it  to  please  one's  self?  I  should  say  regarding 
this  that  while  it  is  obvious,  if  one  thinks  of  it,  that 
pleasing  another  can  exist  for  me  only  as  a  pleasant 
feeling  in  my  own  mind,  which  is  the  motive  of  my 
action,  there  is  a  difference  in  the  meaning  of  these 
expressions  as  commonly  used.  Pleasing  one's  self 
ordinarily  means  that  we  act  from  some  comparatively 
narrow  sentiment  not  involving  penetrating  sym- 
pathy. Thus,  if  one  gives  Christmas  presents  to 
make  a  good  impression  or  from  a  sense  of  propriety, 
he  might  be  said  to  do  it  to  please  himself,  while  if  he 
really  imagined  the  pleasure  the  gift  would  bring  to 
the  recipient  he  would  do  it  to  please  the  latter.  But 
it  is  clear  enough  that  his  own  pleasure  might  be  quite 
as  great  in  the  second  case.  Again,  sometimes  we  do 
things  "to  please  others"  which  we  declare  are  pain- 
ful to  ourselves.  But  this,  of  course,  means  merely 
that  there  are  conflicting  impulses  in  our  own  minds, 
some  of  which  are  sacrificed  to  others.     The  satisfac- 

221 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tion,  or  whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  that  one  gets 
when  he  prefers  his  duty  to  some  other  course  is  just 
as  much  his  own  as  any  pleasure  he  renounces.  No 
self-sacrifice  is  admirable  that  is  not  the  choice  of  a 
higher  or  larger  aspect  of  the  self  over  a  lower  or  par- 
tial aspect.  If  a  man's  act  is  really  self-sacrifice,  that 
is,  not  properly  his  own,  he  would  better  not  do  it. 

Some  opponent  of  Darwin  attempted  to  convict  him 
of  egotism  by  counting  the  number  of  times  that  the 
pronoun  "I"  appears  upon  the  first  few  pages  of  the 
"Origin  of  Species."  He  was  able  to  find  a  great 
many,  and  to  cause  Darwin,  who  was  as  modest  a  man 
as  ever  lived,  to  feel  abashed  at  the  showing;  but  it 
is  doubtful  if  he  convinced  any  reader  of  the  book  of 
the  truth  of  the  assertion.  In  fact,  although  the  dic- 
tionary defines  egotism  as  "the  habit  or  practice  of 
thinking  and  talking  much  of  one's  self,"  the  use  of 
the  first-personal  pronoun  is  hardly  the  essence  of 
the  matter.  This  use  is  always  in  some  degree  a  self- 
assertion,  but  it  has  a  disagreeable  or  egotistical  effect 
only  in  so  far  as  the  self  asserted  is  repellent  to  us. 
Even  Montaigne,  who  says  "I"  on  every  other  line, 
and  whose  avowed  purpose  is  to  display  himself  at 
large  and  in  all  possible  detail,  does  not,  it  seems  to 
me,  really  make  an  impression  of  egotism  upon  the 
congenial  reader,  because  he  contrives  to  make  his 
self  so  interesting  in  every  aspect  that  the  more  we 
are  reminded  of  it  the  better  we  are  pleased;  and  there 
is  good  sense  in  his  doctrine  that  "not  to  speak  round- 
ly of  a  man's  self  implies  some  lack  of  courage;  a  firm 

222 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

and  lofty  judgment,  and  that  judges  soundly  and 
surely,  makes  use  of  his  own  example  upon  all  occa- 
sions, as  well  as  those  of  others."  A  person  will  not 
displease  sensible  people  by  saying  "I"  so  long  as  the 
self  thus  asserted  stands  for  something,  is  a  pertinent, 
significant  "  I,"  and  not  merely  a  random  self-intrusion. 
We  are  not  displeased  to  see  an  athlete  roll  up  his 
sleeves  and  show  his  muscles,  although  if  a  man  of 
only  ordinary  development  did  so  it  would  seem  an 
impertinence;  nor  do  we  think  less  of  Rembrandt  for 
painting  his  own  portrait  every  few  months.  The 
"I"  should  be  functional,  and  so  long  as  a  man  is 
functioning  acceptably  there  can  be  no  objection  to 
his  using  it. 

Indeed,  it  is  a  common  remark  that  the  most  de- 
lightful companions,  or  authors  of  books,  are  often 
the  most  egotistical  in  the  sense  that  they  are  always 
talking  about  themselves.  The  reason  for  this  is  that 
if  the  "I"  is  interesting  and  agreeable  we  adopt  it 
for  the  time  being  and  make  it  our  own.  Then, 
being  on  the  inside  as  it  were,  it  is  our  own  self  that 
is  so  expansive  and  happy.  We  adopt  Montaigne,  or 
Lamb,  or  Thackeray,  or  Stevenson,  or  Whitman,  or 
Thoreau,  and  think  of  their  words  as  our  words. 
Thus  even  extravagant  self-assertion,  if  the  reader 
can  only  be  led  to  enter  into  it,  may  be  congenial. 
There  may  be  quite  as  much  egotism  in  the  suppres- 
sion of  "I"  as  in  the  use  of  it,  and  a  forced  and  ob- 
vious avoidance  of  this  pronoun  often  gives  a  disa- 
greeable feeling  of  the  writer's  self-consciousness.  In 
short,  egotism  is  a  matter  of  character,  not  of  forms 

223 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  language,  and  if  we  are  egotists  the  fact  will  out 
in  spite  of  any  conventional  rules  of  decorum  that  we 
may  follow. 

It  is  possible  to  maintain  that  "I"  is  a  more  modest 
pronoun  than  "one,"  by  which  some  writers  seem  to 
wish  to  displace  it.  If  a  man  says  "I  think,"  he 
speaks  only  for  himself,  while  if  he  says  "one  thinks," 
he  insinuates  that  the  opinion  advanced  is  a  general 
or  normal  view.  To  say  "one  does  not  like  this  pic- 
ture," is  a  more  deadly  attack  upon  it  than  to  say  "I 
do  not  like  it." 

It  would  seem  also  that  more  freedom  of  self-expres- 
sion is  appropriate  to  a  book  than  to  ordinary  inter- 
course, because  people  are  not  obliged  to  read  books, 
and  the  author  has  a  right  to  assume  that  his  readers 
are,  in  a  general  way,  sympathetic  with  that  phase 
of  his  personality  that  he  is  trying  to  express.  If  we 
do  not  sympathize  why  do  we  continue  to  read?  We 
may,  however,  find  fault  with  him  if  he  departs  from 
that  which  it  is  the  proper  function  of  the  book  to  as- 
sert, and  intrudes  a  weak  and  irrelevant  "I"  in  which 
he  has  no  reason  to  suppose  us  interested.  I  presume 
we  can  all  think  of  books  that  might  apparently  be 
improved  by  going  through  them  and  striking  out 
passages  in  which  the  author  has  incontinently  ex- 
pressed an  aspect  of  himself  that  has  no  proper  place 
in  the  work. 

In  every  higher  kind  of  production  a  person  needs 
to  understand  and  believe  in  himself — the  more  thor- 
oughly the  better.     It  is  precisely  that  in  him  which 

224 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

he  feels  to  be  worthy  and  at  the  same  time  peculiar — 
the  characteristic — that  it  is  his  duty  to  produce, 
communicate,  and  realize;  and  he  cannot  possess  this, 
cannot  differentiate  it,  cleanse  it  from  impurities, 
consolidate  and  organize  it,  except  through  prolonged 
and  interested  self-contemplation.  Only  this  can  en- 
able him  to  free  himself  from  the  imitative  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  whimsical  on  the  other,  and  to  stand 
forth  without  shame  or  arrogance  for  what  Jae  truly  is. 
Consequently  every  productive  mind  must  have  in- 
tense self -feeling;  it  must  delight  to  contemplate  the 
characteristic,  to  gloat  over  it  if  you  please,  and  in 
this  way  learn  to  define,  arrange,  and  express  it.  If 
one  will  take  up  a  work  of  literary  art  like,  say,  the 
Sentimental  Journey,  he  will  see  that  a  main  source 
of  the  charm  of  it  is  in  the  writer's  assured  and  con- 
tented familiarity  with  himself.  A  man  who  writes 
like  that  has  delighted  to  brood  over  his  thoughts, 
jealously  excluding  everything  not  wholly  congenial 
to  him,  and  gradually  working  out  an  adequate  ex- 
pression. And  the  superiority,  or  at  least  the  differ- 
ence, in  tone  and  manner  of  the  earlier  English  litera- 
ture as  compared  with  that  of  the  nineteenth  century 
is  apparently  connected  with  a  more  assured  and  re- 
poseful self-possession  on  the  part  of  the  older  writers, 
made  possible,  no  doubt,  by  a  less  urgent  general 
life.  The  same  fact  of  self-intensity  goes  with  notable 
production  in  all  sorts  of  literature,  in  every  art,  in 
statesmanship,  philanthropy,  religion;  in  all  kinds  of 
career. 

Who  does  not  feel  at  times  what  Goethe  calls  the 
225 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

joy  of  dwelling  in  one's  self,  of  surrounding  himself 
with  the  fruits  of  his  own  mind,  with  things  he  has 
made,  perhaps,  books  he  has  chosen,  his  familiar 
clothes  and  possessions  of  all  sorts,  with  his  wife, 
children,  and  old  friends,  and  with  his  own  thoughts, 
which  some,  like  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  confess  to 
a  love  of  rereading  in  books,  letters,  or  diaries?  At 
times  even  conscientious  people,  perhaps,  look  kindly 
at  their  own  faults,  deficiencies,  and  mannerisms, 
precisely  as  they  would  on  those  of  a  familiar  friend. 
Without  self-love  in  some  such  sense  as  this  any 
solid  and  genial  growth  of  character  and  accomplish- 
ment is  hardly  possible.  "Whatever  any  man  has  to 
effect  must  emanate  from  him  like  a  second  self;  and 
how  could  this  be  possible  were  not  his  first  self  en- 
tirely pervaded  by  it?"  Nor  is  it  opposed  to  the  love 
of  others.  "Indeed,"  says  Mr.  Stevenson,  "he  who 
loves  himself,  not  in  idle  vanity,  but  with  a  plenitude 
of  knowledge,  is  the  best  equipped  of  all  to  love  his 
neighbors." 

Self-love,  Shakespeare  says,  is  not  so  vile  a  sin  as 
self-neglecting;  and  many  serious  varieties  of  the 
latter  might  be  specified.  There  is,  for  instance,  a 
culpable  sort  of  self-dreading  cowardice,  not  at  all 
uncommon  with  sensitive  people,  which  shrinks  from 
developing  and  asserting  a  just  "I"  because  of  the 
stress  of  self-feeling — of  vanity,  uncertainty,  and  mor- 
tification— which  is  foreseen  and  shunned.  If  one  is 
liable  to  these  sentiments  the  proper  course  is  to  bear 
with  them  as  with  other  disturbing  conditions,  rather 
than  to  allow  them  to  stand  in  the  way  of  what,  after 

226 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

all,  one  is  bora  to  do.  "Know  your  own  bone,"  says 
Thoreau,  "gnaw  at  it,  bury  it,  unearth  it,  and  gnaw 
it  still."  *     "If  I  am  not  I,  who  will  be?" 

A  tendencjr  to  secretiveness  very  often  goes  with 
this  self-cherishing.  Goethe  was  as  amorous  and 
jealous  about  his  unpublished  works,  in  some  cases, 
as  the  master  of  a  seraglio;  fostering  them  for  years, 
and  sometimes  not  telling  his  closest  friends  of  their 
existence.  His  Eugenie,  "meine  Liebling  Eugenie," 
as  he  calls  it,  was  vulgarized  and  ruined  for  him  by 
his  fatal  mistake  in  publishing  the  first  part  before 
the  whole  was  complete.  It  would  not  be  difficult 
to  show  that  the  same  cherishing  of  favorite  and  pe- 
culiar ideas  is  found  also  in  painters,  sculptors,  and 
effective  persons  of  every  sort.  As  was  suggested  in 
an  earlier  chapter,  this  secretiveness  has  a  social 
reference,  and  few  works  of  art  could  be  carried  through 
if  the  artist  was  convinced  they  would  have  no  value 
in  the  eyes  of  any  one  else.  He  hides  his  work  that  he 
may  purify  and  perfect  it,  thus  making  it  at  once  more 
wholly  and  delightfully  his  own  and  also  more  valuable 
to  the  world  in  the  end.  As  soon  as  the  painter  ex- 
hibits his  picture  he  loses  it,  in  a  sense;  his  system 
of  ideas  about  it  becomes  more  or  less  confused  and 
disorganized  by  the  inrush  of  impressions  arising  from 
a  sense  of  what  other  people  think  of  it;  it  is  no  longer 
the  perfect  and  intimate  thing  which  his  thought 
cherished,  but  has  become  somewhat  crude,  vulgar, 
and  disgusting,  so  that  if  he  is  sensitive  he  may  wish 
never  to  look  upon  it  again.  This,  I  take  it,  is  why 
*  Letters,  p.  46. 
227 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Goethe  could  not  finish  Eugenie,  and  why  Guignet, 
a  French  painter,  of  whom  Hamerton  speaks,  used  to 
alter  or  throw  away  a  painting  that  any  one  by  chance 
saw  upon  the  easel.  Likewise  it  was  in  order  more 
perfectly  to  know  and  express  himself — in  his  book 
called  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers 
— that  Thoreau  retired  to  Walden  Pond,  and  it  was 
doubtless  with  the  same  view  that  Descartes  quitted 
Paris  and  dwelt  for  eight  years  in  Holland,  concealing 
even  his  place  of  residence.  The  Self,  like  a  child, 
is  not  likely  to  hold  its  own  in  the  world  unless  it  has 
had  a  mature  prenatal  development. 

It  may  be  said,  perhaps,  that  these  views  contra- 
dict a  well-known  fact,  namely,  that  we  do  our  best 
work  when  we  are  not  self-conscious,  not  thinking 
about  effect,  but  filled  with  disinterested  and  imper- 
sonal passion.  Such  truth  as  there  is  in  this  idea  is, 
however,  in  no  way  inconsistent  with  what  has  just 
been  said.  It  is  true  that  a  certain  abandonment  and 
self-forgetting  is  often  characteristic  of  high  thought 
and  noble  action.  But  there  would  be  no  produc- 
tion, no  high  thought  or  noble  action,  if  we  relied 
entirely  upon  these  impassioned  moments  without 
preparing  ourselves  to  have  them.  It  is  only  as  we 
have  self-consciousness  that  we  can  be  aware  of  those 
special  tendencies  which  we  assert  in  production,  or 
can  learn  how  to  express  them,  or  even  have  the  de- 
sire to  do  so.  The  moment  of  insight  would  be  im- 
possible without  the  persistent  self-conscious  endeavor 
that  preceded  it,  nor  has  enthusiastic  action  any  value 
without  a  similar  discipline. 

228 


VARIOUS   PHASES  OF  "I" 

It  is  true,  also,  that  in  sensitive  persons  self-feeling 
often  reaches  a  pitch  of  irritability  that  impedes  pro- 
duction, or  vulgarizes  it  through  too  great  deference 
to  opinion.  But  this  is  a  matter  of  the  control  and 
discipline  of  particular  aspects  of  the  self  rather  than 
of  its  general  tendency.  When  undisciplined  this 
sort  of  feeling  may  be  futile  or  harmful,  just  as  fear, 
whose  function  is  to  cause  us  to  avoid  danger,  may 
defeat  its  own  aim  through  excessive  and  untimely 
operation,  and  anger  may  so  excite  us  that  we  lose  the 
power  of  inflicting  injury. 

If  the  people  of  our  time  and  country  are  peculiarly 
selfish,  as  is  sometimes  alleged,  it  is  certainly  not  be- 
cause a  too  rigid  or  clearly  differentiated  type  of  self- 
consciousness  is  general  among  us.  On  the  contrary, 
our  most  characteristic  fault  is  perhaps  a  certain  su- 
perficiality and  vagueness  of  character  and  aims; 
and  this  seems  to  spring  from  a  lack  of  collectedness 
and  self-definition,  which  in  turn  is  connected  with 
the  too  eager  mode  of  life  common  among  us.  I 
doubt,  however,  whether  egotism,  which  is  essentially 
a  falling  short  of  moral  standards,  can  be  said  to  be 
more  prevalent  in  one  age  than  another. 

In  Mr.  Roget's  Thesaurus  may  be  found  about 
six  pages  devoted  to  words  denoting  "Extrinsic  per- 
sonal affections,  or  personal  affections  derived  from 
the  opinions  or  feelings  of  others,"  an  expression 
which  seems  to  mean  nearly  the  same  as  is  here  meant 
by  social  self-feeling  of  the  reflected  or  looking-glass 
sort.     Although  the  compiler  fishes  with  a  wide  net 

229 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  brings  in  much  that  seems  hardly  to  belong  here, 
the  number  of  words  in  common  use  indicating  differ- 
ent varieties  of  this  sort  of  feeling  is  surprising  and 
suggestive.  One  cannot  but  think,  What  insight  and 
what  happy  boldness  of  invention  went  to  the  devis- 
ing of  all  these  terms !  What  a  psychologist  is  lan- 
guage, that  thus  labels  and  treasures  up  so  many 
subtle  aspects  of  the  human  mind! 

We  may  profitably  distinguish,  as  others  have  done, 
two  general  attitudes — the  aggressive  or  self-assertive 
and  the  shrinking  or  humble.  The  first  indicates  that 
one  thinks  favorably  of  himself  and  tries  to  impose 
that  favorable  thought  on  others;  the  second,  that 
he  accepts  and  yields  to  a  depreciating  reflection  of 
himself,  and  feels  accordingly  diminished  and  abased. 
Pride  would,  of  course,  be  an  example  of  the  first  way 
of  feeling  and  acting,  humility  of  the  second. 

But  there  are  many  phases  of  the  aggressive  self,  and 
these,  again,  might  be  classified  something  as  follows: 
first,  in  response  to  imagined  approval  we  have  pride, 
vanity,  or  self-respect;  second,  in  response  to  imag- 
ined censure  we  have  various  sorts  of  resentment; 
and  the  humble  self  might  be  treated  in  a  similar 
manner. 

Pride  and  vanity  are  names  which  are  commonly 
applied  only  to  forms  of  self-approval  that  strike  us 
as  disagreeable  or  egotistical;  but  they  may  be  used 
in  a  somewhat  larger  sense  to  indicate  simply  a  more 
or  less  stable  attitude  of  the  social  self  toward  the 
world  in  which  it  is  reflected;  the  distinction  being 

230 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

of  the  same  sort  as  that  between  unstable  and  rigid 
egotism  already  suggested. 

These  differences  in  stability,  which  are  of  great 
importance  in  the  study  of  social  personality,  are  per- 
haps connected  with  the  contrast  between  the  more 
receptive  and  the  more  constructive  types  of  mind. 
Although  in  the  best  minds  reception  and  construc- 
tion are  harmoniously  united,  and  although  it  may 
be  shown  that  they  are  in  a  measure  mutually  de- 
pendent, so  that  neither  can  be  perfect  without  the 
other,  yet  as  a  rule  they  are  not  symmetrically  de- 
veloped, and  this  lack  of  symmetry  corresponds  to 
divergences  of  personal  character.  Minds  of  one  sort 
are,  so  to  speak,  endogenous  or  ingrowing  in  their  nat- 
ural bent,  while  those  of  another  are  exogenous  or 
outgrowing;  that  is  to  say,  those  of  the  former  kind 
have  a  relatively  strong  turn  for  working  up  old  mate- 
rial, as  compared  with  that  for  taking  in  new;  cogita- 
tion is  more  pleasant  to  them  than  observation;  they 
prefer  the  sweeping  and  garnishing  of  their  house  to 
the  confusion  of  entertaining  visitors;  while  of  the 
other  sort  the  opposite  of  this  may  be  said.  Now,  the 
tendency  of  the  endogenous  or  inward  activities  is  to 
secure  unity  and  stability  of  thought  and  character  at 
the  possible  expense  of  openness  and  adaptability; 
because  the  energy  goes  chiefly  into  systematization, 
and  in  attaining  this  the  mind  is  pretty  sure  to  limit 
its  new  impressions  to  those  that  do  not  disturb  too 
much  that  unity  and  system  it  loves  so  well.  These 
traits  are,  of  course,  manifested  in  the  person's  relation 
to  others.     The  friends  he  has  "and  their  acceptance 

231 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tried"  he  grapples  to  his  soul  with  hooks  of  steel,  but 
is  likely  to  be  unsympathetic  and  hard  toward  influ- 
ences of  a  novel  character.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
exogenous  or  outgrowing  mind,  more  active  near  the 
periphery  than  toward  the  centre,  is  open  to  all  sorts 
of  impressions,  eagerly  taking  in  new  material,  which 
is  likely  never  to  get  much  arrangement;  caring  less 
for  the  order  of  the  house  than  that  it  should  be  full 
of  guests,  quickly  responsive  to  personal  influences, 
but  lacking  that  depth  and  tenacity  of  sympathy 
that  the  other  sort  of  mind  shows  with  people  con- 
genial with  itself. 

Pride,*  then,  is  the  form  social  self-approval  takes 
in  the  more  rigid  or  self-sufficient  sort  of  minds;  the 
person  who  feels  it  is  assured  that  he  stands  well  with 
others  whose  opinion  he  cares  for,  and  does  not  im- 
agine any  humiliating  image  of  himself,  but  carries 
his  mental  and  social  stability  to  such  a  degree  that 
it  is  likely  to  narrow  his  soul  by  warding  off  the  en- 
livening pricks  of  doubt  and  shame.  By  no  means 
independent  of  the  world,  ifc  is,  after  all,  distinctly  a 
social  sentiment,  and  gets  its  standards  ultimately 
from  social  custom  and  opinion.  But  the  proud  man 
is  not  immediately  dependent  upon  what  others  think; 
he  has  worked  over  his  reflected  self  in  his  mind  until 
it  is  a  steadfast  portion  of  his  thought,  an  idea  and 
conviction  apart,  in  some  measure,  from  its  external 
origin.  Hence  this  sentiment  requires  time  for  its 
development  and  flourishes  in  mature  age  rather  than 

*  Compare  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling, 
p.  271  et  seq. 

232 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

in  the  open  and  growing  period  of  youth.  A  man  who 
is  proud  of  his  rank,  his  social  position,  his  profes- 
sional eminence,  his  benevolence,  or  his  integrity,  is 
in  the  habit  of  contemplating  daily  an  agreeable  and 
little  changing  image  of  himself  as  he  believes  he  ap- 
pears in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  This  image  is  prob- 
ably distorted,  since  pride  deceives  by  a  narrowing 
of  the  imagination,  but  it  is  stable,  and  because  it  is 
so,  because  he  feels  sure  of  it,  he  is  not  disturbed  by 
any  passing  breath  of  blame.  If  he  is  aware  of  such  a 
thing  at  all  he  dismisses  it  as  a  vagary  of  no  impor- 
tance, feeling  the  best  judgment  of  the  world  to  be 
securely  in  his  favor.  If  he  should  ever  lose  this  con- 
viction, if  some  catastrophe  should  shatter  the  image, 
he  would  be  a  broken  man,  and,  if  far  gone  in  years, 
would  perhaps  not  raise  his  head  again. 

In  a  sense  pride  is  strength;  that  is,  it  implies  a 
stable  and  consistent  character  which  can  be  counted 
on;  it  will  do  its  work  without  watching,  and  be  hon- 
orable in  its  dealings,  according  to  its  cherished  stand- 
ards; it  has  always  a  vigorous,  though  narrow,  con- 
science. On  the  other  hand,  it  stunts  a  man's  growth 
by  closing  his  mind  to  progressive  influences,  and  so 
in  the  long  run  may  be  a  source  of  weakness.  Burke 
said,  I  believe,  that  no  man  ever  had  a  point  of  pride 
that  was  not  injurious  to  him;  and  perhaps  this  was 
what  he  meant.  Pride  also  causes,  as  a  rule,  a  deeper 
animosity  on  the  part  of  others  than  vanity;  it  may  be 
hated  but  hardly  despised;  yet  many  would  rather 
live  with  it  than  with  vanity,  because,  after  all,  one 
knows  where  to  find  it,  and  so  can  adapt  himself  to  it. 

233 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  other  is  so  whimsical  that  it  is  impossible  to  fore- 
see what  turn  it  will  take  next. 

Language  seldom  distinguishes  clearly  between  a 
way  of  feeling  and  its  visible  expression;  and  so  the 
word  vanity,  which  means  primarily  emptiness,  indi- 
cates either  a  weak  or  hollow  appearance  of  worth 
put  on  in  the  endeavor  to  impress  others,  or  the  state 
of  feeling  that  goes  with  it.  It  is  the  form  social  self- 
approval  naturally  takes  in  a  somewhat  unstable 
mind,  not  sure  of  ;ts  image.  The  vain  man,  in  his 
more  confident  moments,  sees  a  delightful  reflection 
of  himself,  but  knowing  that  it  is  transient,  he  is  afraid 
it  will  change.  He  has  not  fixed  it,  as  the  proud  man 
has,  by  incorporation  with  a  stable  habit  of  thought, 
but,  being  immediately  dependent  for  it  upon  others, 
is  at  their  mercy  and  very  vulnerable,  living  in  the 
frailest  of  glass  houses  which  may  be  shattered  at 
any  moment;  and,  in  fact,  this  catastrophe  happens 
so  often  that  he  gets  somewhat  used  to  it  and  soon  re- 
covers from  it.  While  the  image  which  the  proud  per- 
son contemplates  is  fairly  consistent,  and,  though  dis- 
torted, has  a  solid  basis  in  his  character,  so  that  he  will 
not  accept  praise  for  qualities  he  does  not  believe  him- 
self to  possess;  vanity  has  no  stable  idea  of  itself  and 
will  swallow  any  shining  bait.  The  person  will  gloat 
now  on  one  pleasing  reflection  of  himself,  now  on  an- 
other, trying  to  mimic  each  in  its  turn,  and  becoming, 
so  far  as  he  can,  what  any  flatterer  says  he  is,  or  what 
any  approving  person  seems  to  think  he  is.  It  is 
characteristic  of  him  to  be  so  taken  up  with  his  own 
image  in  the  other's  mind  that  he  is  hypnotized  by  it, 

234 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

as  it  were,  and  sees  it  magnified,  distorted,  and  out  of 
its  true  relation  to  the  other  contents  of  that  mind. 
He  does  not  see,  as  so  often  happens,  that  he  is  be- 
ing managed  and  made  a  fool  of;  he  "gives  himself 
away" — fatuity  being  of  the  essence  of  vanity.  On 
the  other  hand,  and  for  the  same  reason,  a  vain  per- 
son is  frequently  tortured  by  groundless  imaginings 
that  some  one  has  misunderstood  him,  slighted  him, 
insulted  him,  or  otherwise  mistreated  his  social  effigy. 
Of  course  the  immediate  result  of  vanity  is  weak- 
ness, as  that  of  pride  is  strength;  but  on  a  wider  view 
there  is  something  to  be  said  for  it.  Goethe  exclaims 
in  Wilhelm  Meister,  "Would  to  heaven  all  men  were 
vain !  that  is  were  vain  with  clear  perception,  with 
moderation,  and  in  a  proper  sense:  we  should  then, 
in  the  cultivated  world,  have  happy  times  of  it.  Wo- 
men, it  is  told  us,  are  vain  from  the  very  cradle;  yet 
does  it  not  become  them?  do  they  not  please  us  the 
more?  How  can  a  youth  form  himself  if  he  is  not 
vain?  An  empty,  hollow  nature  will,  by  this  means, 
at  least  contrive  to  give  itself  an  outward  show,  and  a 
proper  man  will  soon  train  himself  from  the  outside 
inwards."  *  That  is  to  say,  vanity,  in  moderation, 
may  indicate  an  openness,  a  sensibility,  a  teachability, 
that  is  a  good  augury  of  growth.  In  youth,  at  least, 
it  is  much  preferable  to  pride. 

It  is  the  obnoxious,  or  in  some  way  conspicuous, 
manifestations  of  self-feeling  that  are  likely  to  receive 
special  names.     Accordingly,   there  are   many  words 

*  Wilhelm  Meister's  Travels,  chap,  xii,  Carlyle's  Translation. 
235 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  phrases  for  different  aspects  of  pride  and  vanity, 
while  a  moderate  and  balanced  self-respect  does  not 
attract  nomenclature.  One  who  has  this  is  more  open 
and  flexible  in  feeling  and  behavior  than  one  who 
is  proud;  the  image  is  not  stereotyped,  he  is  subject 
to  humility;  while  at  the  same  time  he  does  not  show 
the  fluttering  anxiety  about  his  appearance  that  goes 
with  vanity,  but  has  stable  ways  of  thinking  about 
the  image,  as  about  other  matters,  and  cannot  be 
upset  by  passing  phases  of  praise  or  blame.  In  fact, 
the  healthy  life  of  the  self  requires  the  same  co-opera- 
tion of  continuity  with  change  that  marks  normal 
development  everywhere;  there  must  be  variability, 
openness,  freedom,  on  a  basis  of  organization:  too  rigid 
organization  meaning  fixity  and  death,  and  the  lack 
of  it  weakness  or  anarchy.  The  self-respecting  man 
values  others'  judgments  and  occupies  his  mind  with 
them  a  great  deal,  but  he  keeps  his  head,  he  discrimi- 
nates and  selects,  considers  all  suggestions  with  a 
view  to  his  character,  and  will  not  submit  to  influences 
not  in  the  line  of  his  development.  Because  he  con- 
ceives his  self  as  a  stable  and  continuing  whole  he  al- 
ways feels  the  need  to  be,  and  cannot  be  guilty  of  that 
separation  between  being  and  seeming  that  constitutes 
affectation.  For  instance,  a  self-respecting  scholar, 
deferent  to  the  standards  set  by  the  opinions  of  others, 
might  wish  to  have  read  all  the  books  on  a  certain  sub- 
ject, and  feel  somewhat  ashamed  not  to  have  done  so, 
but  he  could  not  affect  to  have  read  them  when  he 
had  not.  The  pain  of  breaking  the  unity  of  his  thought, 
of  disfiguring  his  picture  of  himself  as  a  sincere  and 

236 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

consistent  man,  would  overbalance  any  gratification 
he  might  have  in  the  imagined  approval  of  his  thor- 
oughness. If  he  were  vain  he  would  possibly  affect 
to  have  read  the  books;  while  if  arrogant  he  might 
feel  no  compunctions  for  avowed  ignorance  of  them. 

Common  sense  approves  a  just  mingling  of  defer- 
ence and  self-poise  in  the  attitude  of  one  man  toward 
others:  while  the  unyielding  are  certainly  repellent, 
the  too  deferent  are  nearly  as  much  so;  they  are  tire- 
some and  even  disgusting,  because  they  seem  flimsy 
and  unreal,  and  do  not  give  that  sense  of  contact  with 
something  substantial  and  interesting  that  we  look 
for. 

" you  have  missed 

The  manhood  that  should  yours  resist, 
Its  complement." 

We  like  the  manner  of  a  person  who  appears  in- 
terested in  what  we  say  and  do,  and  not  indifferent  to 
our  opinion,  but  has  at  the  same  time  an  evident 
reserve  of  stability  and  independence.  It  is  much 
the  same  with  a  writer;  we  require  of  him  a  bold  and 
determined  statement  of  his  own  special  view — that 
is  what  he  is  here  for — and  yet,  with  this,  an  air  of 
hospitality,  and  an  appreciation  that  he  is  after  all 
only  a  small  part  of  a  large  world. 

With  some,  then,  the  self-image  is  an  imitative 
sketch  in  the  supposed  style  of  the  last  person  they 
have  talked  to;  with  others,  it  is  a  rigid,  traditional 
thing,  a  lifeless  repetition  that  has  lost  all  relation  to 
the  forces  that  originally  moulded  it,  like  the  Byzan- 
tine  madonnas   before   the   time   of   Cimabue;   with 

237 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

others  again  it  is  a  true  work  of  art  in  which  individual 
tendencies  and  the  influence  of  masters  mingle  in  a 
harmonious  whole;  but  all  of  us  have  it,  unless  we  are 
so  deficient  in  imagination  as  to  be  less  than  human. 
When  we  speak  of  a  person  as  independent  of  opinion, 
or  self-sufficient,  we  can  only  mean  that,  being  of  a 
constructive  and  stable  character,  he  does  not  have 
to  recur  every  day  to  the  visible  presence  of  his  ap- 
provers, but  can  supply  their  places  by  imagination, 
can  hold  on  to  some  influences  and  reject  others,  choose 
his  leaders,  individualize  his  conformity;  and  so  work 
out  a  characteristic  and  fairly  consistent  career.  The 
self  must  be  built  up  by  the  aid  of  social  suggestions, 
just  as  all  higher  thought  is. 

Honor  is  a  finer  kind  of  self-respect.  It  is  used  to 
mean  either  something  one  feels  regarding  himself, 
or  something  that  other  people  think  and  feel  regard- 
ing him,  and  so  illustrates  by  the  accepted  use  of 
language  the  fact  that  the  private  and  social  aspects 
of  self  are  inseparable.  One's  honor,  as  he  feels  it, 
and  his  honor  in  the  sense  of  honorable  repute,  as  he 
conceives  it  to  exist  in  the  minds  of  others  whose 
opinion  he  cares  for,  are  two  aspects  of  the  same 
thing.  No  one  can  permanently  maintain  a  standard 
of  honor  in  his  own  mind  if  he  does  not  conceive  of 
some  other  mind  or  minds  as  sharing  and  corroborat- 
ing this  standard.  If  his  immediate  environment  is 
degrading  he  may  have  resort  to  books  or  memory  in 
order  that  his  imagination  may  construct  a  better 
environment  of  nobler  people  to  sustain  his  standard; 
but  if  he  cannot  do  this  it  is  sure  to  fall.     Sentiments 

238 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

of  higher  good  or  right,  like  other  sentiments,  find 
source  and  renewal  in  intercourse.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  cannot  separate  the  idea  of  honor  from  that 
of  a  sincere  and  stable  private  character.  We  can- 
not form  a  habit  of  thought  about  what  is  admirable, 
though  it  be  derived  from  others,  without  creating  a 
mental  standard.  A  healthy  mind  cannot  strive  for 
outward  honor  without,  in  some  measure,  developing 
an  inward  conscience — training  himself  from  the  out- 
side in,  as  Goethe  says. 

It  is  the  result  of  physiological  theories  of  ethics 
— certainly  not  intended  by  the  authors  of  those 
theories — to  make  the  impulses  of  an  ideal  self,  like 
the  sentiment  of  honor,  seem  far-fetched,  extravagant, 
and  irrational.  They  have  to  be  justified  by  an  elab- 
orate course  of  reasoning  which  does  not  seem  very 
convincing  after  all.  No  such  impression,  however, 
could  result  from  the  direct  observation  of  social  life. 
In  point  of  fact,  a  man's  honor,  as  he  conceives  it, 
is  his  self  in  its  most  immediate  and  potent  reality, 
swaying  his  conduct  without  waiting  upon  any  inquiry 
into  its  physiological  antecedents.  The  preference 
of  honor  to  life  is  not  at  all  a  romantic  exception  in 
human  behavior,  but  something  quite  characteristic 
of  man  on  a  really  human  level.  A  despicable  or 
degenerate  person  may  save  his  body  alive  at  the 
expense  of  honor,  and  so  may  almost  any  one  in  mo- 
ments of  panic  or  other  kind  of  demoralization,  but 
the  typical  man,  in  his  place  among  his  fellows  and 
with  his  social  sentiments  about  him,  will  not  do  so. 
We  read  in  history  of  many  peoples  conquered  because 

239 


/ 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

they  lacked  discipline  and  strategy,  or  because  their 
weapons  were  inferior,  but  we  seldom  read  of  any  who 
were  really  cowardly  in  the  sense  that  they  would  not 
face  death  in  battle.  And  the  readiness  to  face  death 
commonly  means  that  the  sentiment  of  honor  domi- 
nates the  impulses  of  terror  and  pain.  All  over  the 
ancient  world  the  Roman  legions  encountered  men 
who  shunned  death  no  more  than  themselves,  but  were 
not  so  skilful  in  inflicting  it;  and  in  Mexico  and  Peru 
the  natives  died  by  thousands  in  a  desperate  struggle 
against  the  Spanish  arms.  The  earliest  accounts  we 
have  of  our  own  Germanic  ancestors  show  a  state  of 
feeling  and  practice  that  made  self-preservation,  in  a 
material  sense,  strictly  subordinate  to  honor.  "Death 
is  better  for  every  clansman  than  coward  life,"  says 
Beowulf,*  and  there  seems  no  doubt  whatever  that 
this  was  a  general  principle  of  action,  so  that  cowardice 
was  a  rare  phenomenon.  In  modern  life  we  see  the 
same  subordination  of  sensation  to  sentiment  among 
soldiers  and  in  a  hundred  other  careers  involving 
bodily  peril — not  as  a  heroic  exception  but  as  the  or- 
dinary practice  of  plain  men.  We  see  it  also  in  the 
general  readiness  to  undergo  all  sorts  of  sensual  pains 
and  privations  rather  than  cease  to  be  respectable  in 
the  eyes  of  other  people.  It  is  well  known,  for  in- 
stance, that  among  the  poor  thousands  endure  cold 
and  partial  starvation  rather  than  lose  their  self- 
respect  by  begging.  In  short,  it  does  not  seem  too 
favorable  a  view  of  mankind  to  say  that  under  normal 

*  Quoted  by  Gummere,  Germanic  Origins,  p.  266. 
240 


VARIOUS   PHASES  OF  "I" 

conditions  their  minds  are  ruled  by  the  sentiment 
of  Norfolk: 

"Mine  honor  is  my  life:  both  grow  in  one; 
Take  honor  from  me  and  my  life  is  done." 

If  we  once  grasp  the  fact  that  the  self  is  primarily  a 
social,  ideal,  or  imaginative  fact,  and  not  a  sensual 
fact,  all  this  appears  quite  natural  and  not  in  need  of 
special  explanation. 

In  relation  to  the  highest  phases  of  individuality 
self-respect  becomes  self-reverence,  in  the  sense  of 
Tennyson,  when  he  says: 

"Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power."  * 

or  of  Goethe  when,  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  second 
book  of  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wanderjahre,  he  names 
self-reverence — Ehrfurcht  vor  sich  selbst — as  the  high- 
est of  the  four  reverences  taught  to  youth  in  his  ideal 
system  of  education. t  Emerson  uses  self-reliance  in 
a  similar  sense,  in  that  memorable  essay  the  note  of 
which  is  "Trust  thyself,  every  heart  vibrates  to  that 
iron  string,"  and  throughout  his  works. 

Self-reverence,  as  I  understand  the  matter,  means 
reverence  for  a  higher  or  ideal  self;  a  real  "I,"  be- 
cause it  is  based  on  what  the  individual  actually  is, 
as  only  he  himself  can  know  and  appropriate  it,  but 
a  better  "I"  of  aspiration  rather  than  attainment; it 
is  simply  the  best  he  can  make  out  of  life.     Reverence 

*  (Enone.  |  Travels,  chap,  x,  in  Carlyle's  Translation. 

241 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

for  it  implies,  as  Emerson  urges,  resistance  to  friends 
and  counsellors  and  to  any  influence  that  the  mind 
honestly  rejects  as  inconsistent  with  itself;  a  man  must 
feel  that  the  final  arbiter  is  within  him  and  not  outside 
of  him  in  some  master,  living  or  dead,  as  conventional 
religion,  for  instance,  necessarily  teaches.  Never- 
theless this  highest  self  is  a  social  self,  in  that  it  is  a 
product  of  constructive  imagination  working  with 
the  materials  which  social  experience  supplies.  Our 
ideals  of  personal  character  are  built  up  out  of  thoughts 
and  sentiments  developed  by  intercourse,  and  very 
largely  by  imagining  how  our  selves  would  appear  in 
the  minds  of  persons  we  look  up  to.  These  are  not 
necessarily  living  persons;  any  one  that  is  at  all  real, 
that  is  imaginable,  to  us,  becomes  a  possible  occasion 
of  social  self-feeling;  and  idealizing  and  aspiring  per- 
sons live  largely  in  the  imagined  presence  of  masters 
and  heroes  to  whom  they  refer  their  own  life  for  com- 
ment and  improvement.  This  is  particularly  true  of 
youth,  when  ideals  are  forming;  later  the  personal  ele- 
ment in  these  ideals,  having  performed  its  function  of 
suggesting  and  vivifying  them,  is  likely  to  fade  out  of 
consciousness  and  leave  only  habits  and  principles 
whose  social  origin  is  forgotten. 

Resentment,  the  attitude  which  an  aggressive  self 
takes  in  response  to  imagined  depreciation,  may  be 
regarded  as  self-feeling  with  a  coloring  of  anger;  in- 
deed, the  relation  between  self-feeling  and  particular 
emotions  like  anger  and  fear  is  so  close  that  the  latter 
might  be  looked  upon  as  simply  specialized  kinds  of 
the  former;  it  makes  little  difference  whether  we  take 

242 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

this  view  or  think  of  them  as  distinct,  since  such  di- 
visions must  always  be  arbitrary.  I  shall  say  more 
of  this  sentiment  in  the  next  chapter. 

If  a  person  conceives  his  image  as  depreciated  in 
the  mind  of  another;  and  if,  instead  of  maintaining  an 
aggressive  attitude  and  resenting  that  depreciation,  he 
yields  to  it  and  accepts  the  image  and  the  judgment 
upon  it;  then  he  feels  and  shows  something  in  the  way 
of  humility.  Here  again  we  have  a  great  variety  of 
nomenclature,  indicating  different  shades  of  humble 
feeling  and  behavior,  such  as  shame,  confusion,  abase- 
ment, humiliation,  mortification,  meekness,  bashful- 
ness,  diffidence,  shyness,  being  out  of  countenance, 
abashed  or  crestfallen,  contrition,  compunction,  re- 
morse, and  so  on. 

Humility,  like  self-approval,  has  forms  that  consist 
with  a  high  type  of  character  and  are  felt  to  be  praise- 
worthy, and  others  that  are  felt  to  be  base.  There  is 
a  sort  that  goes  with  vanity  and  indicates  instability, 
an  excessive  and  indiscriminate  yielding  to  another's 
view  of  one's  self.  We  wish  a  man  to  be  humble  only 
before  what,  from  his  own  characteristic  point  of  view, 
is  truly  superior.  His  humility  should  imply  self- 
respect;  it  should  be  that  attitude  of  deference  which 
a  stable  but  growing  character  takes  in  the  presence 
of  whatever  embodies  its  ideals.  Every  outreaching 
person  has  masters  in  whose  imagined  presence  he 
drops  resistance  and  becomes  like  clay  in  the  hands  of 
the  potter,  that  they  may  make  something  better  of 
him.     He  does  this  from  a  feeling  that  the  master  is 

243 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

more  himself  than  he  is;  there  is  a  receptive  enthusiasm, 
a  sense  of  new  life  that  swallows  up  the  old  self  and 
makes  his  ordinary  personality  appear  tedious,  base, 
and  despicable.  Humility  of  this  sort  goes  with  self- 
reverence,  because  a  sense  of  the  higher  or  ideal  self 
plunges  the  present  and  commonplace  self  into  hu- 
mility. The  man  aims  at  "so  high  an  ideal  that  he 
always  feels  his  unworthiness  in  his  own  sight  and  that 
of  others,  though  aware  of  his  own  desert  by  the  or- 
dinary standards  of  his  community,  country,  or  genera- 
tion." *  But  a  humility  that  is  self-abandonment,  a 
cringing  before  opinion  alien  to  one's  self,  is  felt  to  be 
mere  cowardice  and  servility. 

Books  of  the  inner  life  praise  and  enjoin  lowliness, 
contrition,  repentance,  self-abnegation;  but  it  is  ap- 
parent to  all  thoughtful  readers  that  the  sort  of  hu- 
mility inculcated  is  quite  consistent  with  the  self- 
reverence  of  Goethe  or  the  self-reliance  of  Emerson — 
comes,  indeed,  to  much  the  same  thing.  The  Imi- 
tatio  Christi  is  the  type  of  such  teaching,  yet  it  is  a 
manly  book,  and  the  earlier  part  especially  contains 
exhortations  to  self-trust  worthy  of  Emerson.  "Certa 
viriliter,"  the  writer  says,  "consuetudo  consuetudine 
vincitur.  Si  tu  scis  homines  dimittere,  ipsi  bene  te 
dimittent  tua  facta  facere."  f  The  yielding  constantly 
enjoined  is  either  to  God — that  is,  to  an  ideal  per- 
sonality developed  in  one's  own  mind — or,  if  to  men, 
it  is  a  submission  to  external  rule  which  is  designed  to 

*  Stanley,  The  Evolutionary  Psychology  of  Feeling,  p.  280. 

f  "Strive  manfully;  habit  is  subdued  by  habit.  If  you  know 
how  to  dismiss  men,  they  also  will  dismiss  you,  to  do  your  own 
things." — De  Imitatione  Christi,  book  i,  chap,  xxi,  par.  2. 

244 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

leave  the  will  free  for  what  are  regarded  as  its  higher 
functions.  The  whole  teaching  tends  to  the  ag- 
grandizement of  an  ideal  but  intensely  private  self, 
worked  out  in  solitary  meditation — to  insure  which 
worldly  ambition  is  to  be  renounced — and  symbolized 
as  God,  conscience,  or  grace.  The  just  criticism  of 
the  doctrine  that  Thomas  stands  for  is  not  that  it 
depreciates  manhood  and  self-reliance,  but  that  it 
calls  these  away  from  the  worldly  activities  where 
they  are  so  much  needed,  and  exercises  them  in  a 
region  of  abstract  imagination.  No  healthy  mind 
can  cast  out  self-assertion  and  the  idea  of  personal 
freedom,  however  the  form  of  expression  may  seem  to 
deny  these  things,  and  accordingly  the  Imitation,  and 
still  more  the  New  Testament,  are  full  of  them.  Where 
there  is  no  self-feeling,  no  ambition  of  any  sort,  there 
is  no  efficacy  or  significance.  To  lose  the  sense  of  a 
separate,  productive,  resisting  self,  would  be  to  melt 
and  merge  and  cease  to  be. 

Healthy,  balanced  minds,  of  only  medium  sensi- 
bility, in  a  congenial  environment  and  occupied  with 
wholesome  activity,  keep  the  middle  road  of  self- 
respect  and  reasonable  ambition.  They  may  require 
no  special  effort,  no  conscious  struggle  with  recalci- 
trant egotism,  to  avoid  heart-burning,  jealousy,  ar- 
rogance, anxious  running  after  approval,  and  other 
maladies  of  the  social  self.  With  enough  self-feeling 
to  stimulate  and  not  enough  to  torment  him,  with  a 
social  circle  appreciative  but  not  flattering,  with  good 
health  and  moderate  success,  a  man  may  go  through 

245 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

life  with  very  little  use  for  the  moral  and  religious 
weapons  that  have  been  wrought  for  the  repression  of 
a  contumacious  self.  There  are  many,  particularly 
in  an  active,  hopeful,  and  materially  prosperous  time 
like  this,  who  have  little  experience  of  inner  conflict 
and  no  interest  in  the  literature  and  doctrine  that  re- 
late to  it. 

But  nearly  all  persons  of  the  finer,  more  sensitive 
sort  find  the  social  self  at  times  a  source  of  passion  and 
pain.  In  so  far  as  a  man  amounts  to  anything,  stands 
for  anything,  is  truly  an  individual,  he  has  an  ego 
about  which  his  passions  cluster,  and  to  aggrandize 
which  must  be  a  principal  aim  with  him.  But  the 
very  fact  that  fhe  self  is  the  object  of  our  schemes  and 
endeavors} makes  it  a  centre  of  mental  disturbance: 
its  suggestions  are  of  effort,  responsibility,  doubt, 
hope,  and  fear.  Just  as  a  man  cannot  enjoy  the  grass 
and  trees  in  his  own  grounds  with  quite  the  peace  and 
freedom  that  he  can  those  abroad,  because  they  remind 
him  of  improvements  that  he  ought  to  make  and  the 
like;  so  any  part  of  the  self  is,  in  its  nature,  likely  to 
be  suggestive  of  exertion  rather  than  rest.  Moreover, 
it  would  seem  that  self-feeling,  though  pleasant  in 
normal  duration  and  intensity,  is  disagreeable  in  ex- 
cess, like  any  other  sort  of  feeling.  One  reason  why 
we  get  tired  of  ourselves  is  simply  that  we  have  ex- 
hausted our  capacity  for  experiencing  with  pleasure  a 
certain  kind  of  emotion. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  self  that  is  most  importunate 
is  a  reflection,  largely,  from  the  minds  of  others. 
This  phase  of  self  is  related  to  character  very  much  as 

246 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

credit  is  related  to  the  gold  and  other  securities  upon 
which  it  rests.  It  easily  and  willingly  expands,  in 
most  of  us,  and  is  liable  to  sudden,  irrational,  and 
grievous  collapses.  We  live  on,  cheerful,  self-confi- 
dent, conscious  of  helping  make  the  world  go  round, 
until  in  some  rude  hour  we  learn  that  we  do  not  stand 
so  well  as  we  thought  we  did,  that  the  image  of  us  is 
tarnished.  Perhaps  we  do  something,  quite  naturally, 
that  we  find  the  social  order  is  set  against,  or  perhaps 
it  is  the  ordinary  course  of  our  life  that  is  not  so  well 
regarded  as  we  supposed.  At  any  rate,  we  find  with 
a  chill  of  terror  that  the  world  is  cold  and  strange,  and 
that  our  self-esteem,  self-confidence,  and  hope,  being 
chiefly  founded  upon  opinions  attributed  to  others,  go 
down  in  the  crash.  Our  reason  may  tell  us  that  we 
are  no  less  Worthy  than  we  were  before,  but  dread  and 
doubt  do  not  permit  us  to  believe  it.  The  sensitive 
mind  will  certainly  suffer,  because  of  the  instability 
of  opinion.  Cadet  cum  labili.  As  social  beings  we  live 
with  our  eyes  upon  our  reflection,  but  have  no  assur- 
ance of  the  tranquillity  of  the  waters  in  which  we  see  it. 
In  the  days  of  witchcraft  it  used  to  be  believed  that  if 
one  person  secretly  made  a  waxen  image  of  another  and 
stuck  pins  into  the  image,  its  counterpart  would  suffer 
tortures,  and  that  if  the  image  was  melted  the  person 
would  die.  This  superstition  is  almost  realized  in 
the  relation  between  the  private  self  and  its  social 
reflection.  They  seem  separate  but  are  darkly  united, 
and  what  is  done  to  the  one  is  done  to  the  other. 

If  a  person  of  energetic  and  fine-strung  tempera- 
ment is  neither  vain  nor  proud,   and  lives  equably 

247 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

without  suffering  seriously  from  mortification,  jeal- 
ousy, and  the  like;  it  is  because  he  has  in  some  way 
learned  to  discipline  and  control  his  self-feeling,  and 
thus  to  escape  the  pains  to  which  it  makes  him  liable. 
To  effect  some  such  escape  has  always  been  a  present 
and  urgent  problem  with  sensitive  minds,  and  the  lit- 
erature of  the  inner  life  is  very  largely  a  record  of 
struggle  with  the  inordinate  passions  of  the  social 
self.  To  the  commoner  and  somewhat  sluggish  sorts 
of  people  these  passions  are,  on  the  whole,  agreeable 
and  beneficent.  Emulation,  ambition,  honor,  even 
pride  and  vanity  in  moderation,  belong  to  the  higher 
and  more  imaginative  parts  of  our  thought;  they 
awaken  us  from  sensuality  and  inspire  us  with  ideal 
and  socially  determined  purposes.  The  doctrine  that 
they  are  evil  could  have  originated  only  with  those 
who  felt  them  so;  that  is,  I  take  it,  with  unusually 
sensitive  spirits,  or  those  whom  circumstances  denied 
a  normal  and  wholesome  self-expression.  To  such 
the  thought  of  self  becomes  painful,  not  because  of 
any  lack  of  self -feeling;  but,  quite  the  reverse,  because, 
being  too  sensitive  and  tender,  it  becomes  over- 
wrought, so  that  this  thought  sets  in  vibration  an 
emotional  chord  already  strained  and  in  need  of  rest. 
To  such  minds  self-abnegation  becomes  an  ideal,  an 
ideal  of  rest,  peace,  and  freedom,  like  green  pastures 
and  still  waters.  The  prophets  of  the  inner  life,  like 
Marcus  Aurelius,  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine,  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  and  Pascal,  were  men  distinguished  not  by 
the  lack  of  an  aggressive  self,  but  by  a  success  in  con- 
trolling and  elevating  it  which  makes  them  the  ex- 

248 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

amples  of  all  who  undergo  a  like  struggle  with  it.  If 
their  ego  had  not  been  naturally  importunate  they 
would  not  have  been  forced  to  contend  with  it,  and  to 
develop  the  tactics  of  that  contention  for  the  edifica- 
tion of  times  to  come. 

The  social  self  may  be  protected  either  in  the  neg- 
ative way,  by  some  sort  of  withdrawal  from  the  sug- 
gestions that  agitate  and  harass  it,  or  in  the  positive 
way,  by  contending  with  them  and  learning  to  control 
and  transform  them,  so  that  they  are  no  longer  pain- 
ful; most  teachers  inculcating  some  sort  of  a  combi- 
nation of  these  two  kinds  of  tactics. 

Physical  withdrawal  from  the  presence  of  men  has 
always  been  much  in  favor  with  those  in  search  of  a 
calmer,  surer  life.  The  passions  to  be  regulated  are 
sympathetic  in  origin,  awakened  by  imagination  of 
the  minds  of  other  persons  with  whom  we  come  in 
contact.  As  Contarini  Fleming  remarks  in  Disraeli's 
novel,  "So  soon  as  I  was  among  men  I  desired  to  in- 
fluence them."  To  retire  to  the  monastery,  or  the 
woods,  or  the  sea,  is  to  escape  from  the  sharp  sug- 
gestions that  spur  on  ambition;  and  even  to  change 
from  the  associates  and  competitors  of  our  active  life 
into  the  company  of  strangers,  or  at  least  of  those 
whose  aims  and  ambitions  are  different  from  ours,  has 
much  the  same  effect.  To  get  away  from  one's  work- 
ing environment  is,  in  a  sense,  to  get  away  from  one's 
self;  and  this  is  often  the  chief  advantage  of  travel 
and  change.  I  can  hardly  agree  with  those  who  imag- 
ine that  a  special  instinct  of  withdrawal  is  necessary 

249 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

to  explain  the  prominence  of  retirement  in  the  ordi- 
nances of  religion.  People  wish  to  retire  from  the 
world  because  they  are  weary,  harassed,  driven  by  it, 
so  that  they  feel  that  they  cannot  recover  their  equa- 
nimity without  getting  away  from  it.  To  the  impres- 
sible mind  life  is  a  theatre  of  alarms  and  conten- 
tions, even  when  a  phlegmatic  person  can  see  no 
cause  for  agitation — and  to  such  a  mind  peace  often 
seems  the  one  thing  fair  and  desirable,  so  that  the 
cloister  or  the  forest,  or  the  vessel  on  the  lonesome 
sea,  is  the  most  grateful  object  of  imagination.  The 
imaginative  self,  which  is,  for  most  purposes,  the  real 
self,  may  be  more  battered,  wounded,  and  strained  by 
a  striving,  ambitious  life  than  the  material  body  could 
be  in  a  more  visible  battle,  and  its  wOunds  are  usually 
more  lasting  and  draw  more  deeply  upon  the  vitality. 
Mortification,  resentment,  jealousy,  the  fear  of  dis- 
grace and  failure,  sometimes  even  hope  and  elation, 
are  exhausting  passions;  and  it  is  after  a  severe  expe- 
rience of  them  that  retirement  seems  most  healing 
and  desirable. 

A  subtler  kind  of  withdrawal  takes  place  in  the 
imagination  alone  by  curtailing  ambition,  by  trim- 
ming down  one's  idea  of  himself  to  a  measure  that 
need  not  fear  further  diminution.  How  secure  and 
restful  it  would  be  if  one  could  be  consistently  and 
sincerely  humble !  There  is  no  sweeter  feeling  than 
contrition,  self-abnegation,  after  a  course  of  alternate 
conceit  and  mortification.  This  also  is  an  established 
part  of  the  religious  discipline  of  the  mind.  Thus  we 
find  the  following  in  Thomas:  "Son,  now  I  will  teach 

250 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

thee  the  way  of  peace  and  of  true  liberty.  .  .  .  Study 
to  do  another's  will  rather  than  thine  own.  Choose 
ever  to  have  less  rather  than  more.  Seek  ever  the 
lower  place  and  to  be  subject  to  all;  ever  wish  and 
pray  that  the  will  of  God  may  be  perfectly  done  in 
thee  and  in  all.  Behold  such  a  man  enters  the  bounds 
of  peace  and  calm."  *  In  other  words,  lop  off  the 
aggressive  social  self  altogether,  renounce  the  or- 
dinary objects  of  ambition,  accustom  yourself  to  an 
humble  place  in  others'  thoughts,  and  you  will  be  at 
peace;  because  you  will  have  nothing  to  lose,  nothing 
to  fear.  No  one  at  all  acquainted  with  the  moralists, 
pagan  or  Christian,  will  need  to  be  more  than  re- 
minded that  this  imaginative  withdrawal  of  the  self 
from  strife  and  uncertainty  has  ever  been  inculcated 
as  a  means  to  happiness  and  edification.  Many  per- 
sons who  are  sensitive  to  the  good  opinion  of  others, 
and,  by  impulse,  take  great  pleasure  in  it,  shrink  from 
indulging  this  pleasure  because  they  know  by  experi- 
ence that  it  puts  them  into  others'  power  and  intro- 
duces an  element  of  weakness,  unrest,  and  probable 
mortification.  By  recognizing  a  favorable  opinion  of 
yourself,  and  taking  pleasure  in  it,  you  in  a  measure 
give  yourself  and  your  peace  of  mind  into  the  keeping 
of  another,  of  whose  attitude  you  can  never  be  certain. 
You  have  a  new  source  of  doubt  and  apprehension. 
One  learns  in  time  the  wisdom  of  entering  into  such 
relations  only  with  persons  of  whose  sincerity,  sta- 
bility, and  justice  one  is  as  sure  as  possible;  and  also 
of   having   nothing   to   do   with   approval   of  himself 

*  De  Imitatione  Christi,  book  iii,  chap,  xxiii,  par.  1. 
251 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

which  he  does  not  feel  to  have  a  secure  basis  in  his 
character.  And  so  regarding  self-aggrandizement  in 
the  various  forms  implicitly  condemned  by  Thomas's 
four  rules  of  peace;  if  a  man  is  of  so  eager  a  tempera- 
ment that  he  does  not  need  these  motives  to  awaken 
him  and  call  his  faculties  into  normal  action,  he  will 
be  happier  and  possibly  more  useful  to  the  world  if 
he  is  able  to  subdue  them  by  some  sort  of  discipline. 
In  this  way,  it  seems  to  me,  we  may  chiefly  account 
for  and  justify  the  stringent  self-suppression  of  Pascal 
and  of  many  other  fine  spirits.  "So  jealous  was  he  of 
any  surprise  of  pleasure,  of  any  thought  of  vanity  or 
complacency  in  himself  and  his  work,  that  he  wore  a 
girdle  of  iron  next  his  skin,  the  sharp  points  of  which 
he  pressed  closely  when  he  thought  himself  in  any 
danger.  ..."  * 

Of  course  the  objection  to  withdrawal,  physical  or 
imaginative,  is  that  it  seems  to  be  a  refusal  of  social 
functions,  a  rejection  of  life,  leading  logically  to  other- 
worldism,  to  the  idea  that  it  is  better  to  die  than  to 
live.  According  to  this  teaching,  in  its  extreme  form, 
the  best  thing  that  can  happen  to  a  man  is  to  die  and 
go  to  heaven;  but  if  that  is  not  permitted,  then  let  the 
private,  ambitious  self,  set  to  play  the  tunes  of  this 
world,  die  in  him,  and  be  replaced  by  humble  and  se- 
cluded meditation  in  preparation  for  the  life  to  come. 
When  this  doctrine  was  taught  and  believed  to  such  an 
extent  that  a  great  part  of  the  finer  spirits  were  led, 
during  centuries,  to  isolate  themselves  in  deserts  and 
cloisters,  or  at  least  to  renounce  and  depreciate  the 
affections  and  duties  of  the  family,  the  effect  was  no 
*  Tulloch's  Pascal,  p.  100. 
252 


VARIOUS    PHASES  OF  "I" 

doubt  bad;  but  in  our  time  there  is  little  tendency  to 
this  extreme,  and  there  is  perhaps  danger  that  the  use- 
fulness of  partial  or  occasional  withdrawal  may  be 
overlooked.  Mr.  Lecky  thinks,  for  instance,  that  the 
complete  suppression  of  the  conventual  system  by 
Protestantism  has  been  far  from  a  benefit  to  women  or 
the  world,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  any 
institution  more  needed  than  one  which  should  fur- 
nish a  shelter  for  unprotected  women  and  convert 
them  into  agents  of  charity.  *  The  amount  and  kind 
of  social  stimulation  that  a  man  can  bear  without 
harm  to  his  character  and  working  power  depends, 
roughly  speaking,  upon  his  sensitiveness,  which  de- 
termines the  emotional  disturbance,  and  upon  the 
vigor  of  the  controlling  or  co-ordinating  functions, 
which  measures  his  power  to  guide  or  quell  emotion 
and  make  it  subsidiary  to  healthy  life.  There  has 
always  been  a  class  of  persons,  including  a  large  pro- 
portion of  those  capable  of  the  higher  sorts  of  intel- 
lectual production,  for  whom  the  competitive  struggles 
of  ordinary  life  are  overstimulating  and  destructive, 
and  who  therefore  cannot  serve  the  world  well  without 
apparently  secluding  themselves  from  it.  It  would 
seem,  then,  that  withdrawal  and  asceticism  are  often 
too  sweepingly  condemned.  A  sound  practical  mo- 
rality will  consider  these  things  in  relation  to  various 
types  of  character  and  circumstance,  and  find,  I  be- 
lieve, important  functions  for  both. 

But  the  most  radical  remedy  for  the  mortifications 
and  uncertainties  of  the  social  self  is  not  the  negative 
*  See  his  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii,  p.  369. 
253 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

one  of  merely  secluding  or  diminishing  the  I,  but 
the  positive  one  of  transforming  it.  The  two  are  not 
easily  distinguishable,  and  are  usually  phases  of  the 
same  process.  The  self-instinct,  though  it  cannot  be 
suppressed  while  mental  vigor  remains,  can  be  taught 
to  associate  itself  more  and  more  with  ideas  and  aims 
of  general  and  permanent  worth,  which  can  be  thought 
of  as  higher  than  the  more  sensual,  narrow,  or  tempo- 
rary interests,  and  independent  of  them.  It  must 
always  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  self  is  any  idea  or 
system  of  ideas  with  which  is  associated  the  peculiar 
appropriative  attitude  we  call  self-feeling.  Anything 
whose  depreciation  makes  me  feel  resentful  is  myself, 
whether  it  is  my  coat,  my  face,  my  brother,  the  book 
I  have  published,  the  scientific  theory  I  accept,  the 
philanthropic  work  to  which  I  am  devoted,  my  re- 
ligious creed,  or  my  country.  The  only  question  is, 
Am  I  identified  with  it  in  my  thought,  so  that  to  touch 
it  is  to  touch  me?  Thus  in  "  Middlemarch  "  the  true 
self  of  Mr.  Casaubon,  his  most  aggressive,  persistent, 
and  sensitive  part,  is  his  system  of  ideas  relating  to 
the  unpublished  "Key  to  All  Mythologies."  It  is  about 
this  that  he  is  proud,  jealous,  sore,  and  apprehensive. 
What  he  imagines  that  the  Brasenose  men  will  think 
of  it  is  a  large  part  of  his  social  self,  and  he  suffers 
hidden  joy  and  torture  according  as  he  is  hopeful  or 
despondent  of  its  triumphant  publication.  When  he 
finds  that  his  body  must  die  his  chief  thought  is  how 
to  keep  this  alive,  and  he  attempts  to  impose  its  com- 
pletion upon  poor  Dorothea,  who  is  a  pale  shadow  in 
his  life  compared  with  the  Key,  a  mere  instrument  to 
minister  to  this  fantastic  ego.     So  if  one,  turning  the 

254 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

leaves  of  history,  could  evoke  the  real  selves  of  all  the 
men  of  thought,  what  a  strange  procession  they  would 
be ! — outlandish  theories,  unintelligible  and  forgotten 
creeds,  hypotheses  once  despised  but  now  long  estab- 
lished, or  vice  versa — all  conceived  eagerly,  jealously, 
devotedly,  as  the  very  heart  of  the  self.  There  is  no 
class  more  sensitive  and  none,  not  even  the  insane,  in 
whom  self-feeling  attaches  to  such  singular  and  re- 
mote conceptions.  An  astronomer  may  be  indifferent 
when  you  depreciate  his  personal  appearance,  abuse 
his  relatives,  or  question  his  pecuniary  honesty;  but 
if  you  doubt  that  there  are  artificial  canals  on  Mars 
you  cut  him  to  the  quick.  And  poets  and  artists  of 
every  sort  have  always  and  with  good  reason  been  re- 
garded as  a  genus  irritabile. 

The  ideas  of  self  most  commonly  cherished,  and  the 
ambitions  corresponding  to  these  ideas,  fail  to  ap- 
pease the  imagination  of  the  idealist,  for  various  rea- 
sons; chiefly,  perhaps,  for  the  following:  first  because 
they  seem  more  or  less  at  variance  with  the  good  of 
other  persons,  and  so,  to  the  imaginative  and  sym- 
pathetic mind,  bring  elements  of  inconsistency  and 
wrong,  which  it  cannot  accept  as  consonant  with  its 
own  needs;  and  second  because  their  objects  are  at 
best  temporary,  so  that  even  if  thought  of  as  achieved 
they  fail  to  meet  the  need  of  the  mind  for  a  resting- 
place  in  some  conception  of  permanent  good  or  right. 
The  transformation  of  narrow  and  temporary  ambi- 
tions or  ideals  into  something  more  fitted  to  satisfy 
the  imagination  in  these  respects,  is  an  urgent  need, 
a  condition  precedent  to  peace  of  mind,  in  many  per- 
sons.    The  unquiet  and  discordant  state  of  the  unre- 

255 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

generate  is  a  commonplace,  a  thousand  times  repeated, 
of  writings  on  the  inner  life.  "Superbus  et  avarus 
numquam  quiescunt,"  they  tell  us,  and  to  enable  us  to 
escape  from  such  unrest  is  a  chief  aim  of  the  discipline 
of  self-feeling  enjoined  by  ethical  and  religious  teach- 
ers. "Self,"  "the  natural  man,"  and  similar  expres- 
sions indicate  an  aspect  of  the  self  thought  of  as  lower 
— in  part  at  least  because  of  the  insecure,  inconsistent, 
and  temporary  character  just  indicated — which  is  to 
be  so  far  as  possible  subjected  and  forgotten,  while  the 
feelings  once  attached  to  it  find  a  less  precarious  ob- 
ject in  ideas  of  justice  and  right,  or  in  the  concep- 
tion of  a  personal  deity,  in  whom  all  that  is  best  of  per- 
sonality is  to  have  secure  existence  and  eternal  success. 

In  this  sense  also  we  may  understand  the  idea  of 
freedom  as  it  presented  itself  to  Thomas  a,  Kempis 
and  similar  minds.  To  forget  "self"  and  live  the 
larger  life  is  to  be  free;  free,  that  is,  from  the  rack- 
ing passions  of  the  lower  self,  free  to  go  onward  into 
a  self  that  is  joyful,  boundless,  and  without  remorse. 
To  gain  this  freedom  the  principal  means  is  the  con- 
trol or  mortification  of  sensual  needs  and  worldly 
ambitions. 

Thus  the  passion  of  self-aggrandizement  is  per- 
sistent but  plastic;  it  will  never  disappear  from  a 
vigorous  mind,  but  may  become  morally  higher  by 
attaching  itself  to  a  larger  conception  of  what  con- 
stitutes the  self. 

Wherever  men  find  themselves  out  of  joint  with 
their  social  environment  the  fact  will  be  reflected  in 

256 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

some  peculiarity  of  self-feeling.  Thus  it  was  in  times 
when  the  general  state  of  Europe  was  decadent  and 
hopeless,  or  later  when  ceaseless  wars  and  the  com- 
mon rule  of  violence  prevailed,  that  finer  spirits,  for 
whose  ambition  the  times  offered  no  congenial  career, 
so  largely  sought  refuge  in  religious  seclusion,  and 
there  built  up  among  themselves  a  philosophy  which 
compensated  them  by  the  vision  of  glory  in  another 
world  for  their  insignificance  in  this.  An  institution 
so  popular  and  enduring  as  monasticism  and  the  sys- 
tem of  belief  that  throve  in  connection  with  it  must 
have  answered  to  some  deep  need  of  human  nature, 
and  it  would  seem  that,  as  regarded  the  more  intel- 
lectual class,  this  need  was  largely  that  of  creating  a 
social  self  and  system  of  selves  which  could  thrive  in 
the  actual  state  of  things.  Their  natures  craved  suc- 
cess, and,  following  a  tendency  always  at  work,  though 
never  more  fantastic  in  its  operation,  they  created 
an  ideal  or  standard  of  success  which  they  could 
achieve — very  much  as  a  farmer's  boy  with  a  weak 
body  but  an  active  brain  sometimes  goes  into  law, 
seeking  and  upholding  an  intellectual  type  of  success. 
From  this  point  of  view — which  is,  of  course,  only 
one  of  many  whence  monasticism  may  be  regarded — • 
it  appears  as  a  wonderful  exhibition  of  the  power  of 
human  nature  to  effectuate  itself  in  a  co-operative 
manner  in  spite  of  the  most  untoward  external  cir- 
cumstances. 

If  we  have  less  flight  from  the  world,  corporeal  or 
metaphysical,  at  the  present  day,  it  is  doubtless  in 
part  because  the  times  are  more  hospitable  to  the  finer 

257 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

abilities,  so  that  all  sorts  of  men,  within  wide  limits, 
find  careers  in  which  they  may  hope  to  gratify  a  rea- 
sonable ambition.  But  even  now,  where  conditions 
are  deranged  and  somewhat  anarchical,  so  that  many 
find  themselves  cut  off  from  the  outlook  toward  a 
congenial  self-development,  the  wine  of  life  turns 
bitter,  and  harrying  resentments  are  generated  which 
more  or  less  disturb  the  stability  of  the  social  order. 
Each  man  must  have  his  "I";  it  is  more  necessary  to 
him  than  bread;  and  if  he  does  not  find  scope  for  it 
within  the  existing  institutions  he  will  be  likely  to 
make  trouble. 

Persons  of  great  ambitions,  or  of  peculiar  aims  of 
any  sort,  lie  open  to  disorders  of  self-feeling,  because 
they  necessarily  build  up  in  their  minds  a  self-image 
which  no  ordinary  social  environment  can  understand 
or  corroborate,  and  which  must  be  maintained  by 
hardening  themselves  against  immediate  influences, 
enduring  or  repressing  the  pains  of  present  deprecia- 
tion, and  cultivating  in  imagination  the  approval  of 
some  higher  tribunal.  If  the  man  succeeds  in  becom- 
ing indifferent  to  the  opinions  of  his  neighbors  he 
runs  into  another  danger,  that  of  a  distorted  and  ex- 
travagant self  of  the  pride  sort,  since  by  the  very 
process  of  gaining  independence  and  immunity  from 
the  stings  of  depreciation  and  misunderstanding,  he 
has  perhaps  lost  that  wholesome  deference  to  some 
social  tribunal  that  a  man  cannot  dispense  with  and 
remain  quite  sane.  The  image  lacks  verification  and 
correction  and  becomes  too  much  the  reflection  of  an 
undisciplined    self-feeling.     It    would    seem    that    the 

258 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

megalomania  or  delusion  of  greatness  which  Lom- 
broso,  with  more  or  less  plausibility,  ascribes  to  Vic- 
tor Hugo  and  many  other  men  of  genius,  is  to  be  ex- 
plained largely  in  this  way. 

Much  the  same  may  be  said  regarding  the  relation 
of  self-feeling  to  mental  disorder,  and  to  abnormal 
personality  of  all  sorts.  It  seems  obvious,  for  in- 
stance, that  the  delusions  of  greatness  and  delusions 
of  persecution  so  common  in  insanity  are  expressions 
of  self-feeling  escaped  from  normal  limitation  and 
control.  The  instinct  which  under  proper  regulation 
by  reason  and  sympathy  gives  rise  to  just  and  sane 
ambition,  in  the  absence  of  it  swells  to  grotesque  pro- 
portions; while  the  delusion  of  persecution  appears  to 
be  a  like  extravagant  development  of  that  jealousy 
regarding  what  others  are  thinking  of  us  which  often 
reaches  an  almost  insane  point  in  irritable  people 
whose  sanity  is  not  questioned. 

The  peculiar  relations  to  other  persons  attending 
any  marked  personal  deficiency  or  peculiarity  are 
likely  to  aggravate,  if  not  to  produce,  abnormal  mani- 
festations of  self-feeling.  Any  such  trait  sufficiently 
noticeable  to  interrupt  easy  and  familiar  intercourse 
with  others,  and  make  people  talk  and  think  about 
a  person  or  to  him  rather  than  with  him,  can  hardly 
fail  to  have  this  effect.  If  he  is  naturally  inclined  to 
pride  or  irritability,  these  tendencies,  which  depend 
for  correction  upon  the  flow  of  sympathy,  are  likely 
to  be  increased.  One  who  shows  signs  of  mental 
aberration  is,  inevitably  perhaps,  but  cruelly,  shut 
off  from  familiar,  thoughtless  intercourse,  partly  ex- 

259 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

communicated;  his  isolation  is  unwittingly  proclaimed 
to  him  on  every  countenance  by  curiosity,  indifference, 
aversion,  or  pity,  and  in  so  far  as  he  is  human  enough 
to  need  free  and  equal  communication  and  feel  the 
lack  of  it,  he  suffers  pain  and  loss  of  a  kind  and  degree 
which  others  can  only  faintly  imagine,  and  for  the 
most  part  ignore.  He  finds  himself  apart,  "not  in 
it,"  and  feels  chilled,  fearful,  and  suspicious.  Thus 
"queerness"  is  no  sooner  perceived  than  it  is  multi- 
plied by  reflection  from  other  minds.  The  same  is 
true  in  some  degree  of  dwarfs,  deformed  or  disfigured 
persons,  even  the  deaf  and  those  suffering  from  the 
infirmities  of  old  age.  The  chief  misery  of  the  decline 
of  the  faculties,  and  a  main  cause  of  the  irritability 
that  often  goes  with  it,  is  evidently  the  isolation,  the 
lack  of  customary  appreciation  and  influence,  which 
only  the  rarest  tact  and  thoughtfulness  on  the  part 
of  others  can  alleviate. 

An  unhealthy  self  is  at  the  heart  of  nearly  all  social 
discontent.  That  is,  if  classes  of  men  find  themselves 
leading  a  kind  of  life  that  does  not  fulfil  the  deep  needs 
of  human  nature,  they  are  certain  to  manifest  their 
inner  trouble  by  some  sort  of  untoward  behavior.  It 
is  true  that  the  self  has  great  adaptability.  Hardship 
does  not  necessarily  impair  it;  in  fact  strenuous  occu- 
pation is  one  of  its  needs.  But  there  are  other  needs, 
equally  essential,  whose  gratification  is  often  denied 
by  the  conditions  of  life.  Leaving  aside  individual 
peculiarities,  the  additional  needs  shared  by  all  of  us 
may  perhaps  be  summed  up  in  three,  self-expression, 

260 


VARIOUS  PHASES  OF  "I" 

appreciation,  and  a  reasonable  security.  No  man  can 
or  ought  to  be  content  unless  he  has  a  chance  to 
work  out  his  personality,  to  form,  strive  for,  and  grat- 
ify reasonable  ambitions.  In  connection  with  this, 
indeed  really  as  a  part  of  it,  he  needs  fellowship  and 
that  appreciation  by  others  which  gives  his  self  so- 
cial corroboration  and  support.  And,  finally,  he  can- 
not take  much  satisfaction  in  life  unless  he  feels  that 
he  is  not  at  the  mercy  of  chance  or  of  others'  wills, 
but  has  a  fair  prospect,  if  he  strives  steadily,  of  main- 
taining his  position.  No  one  can  study  sympatheti- 
cally the  actual  state  of  men  and  women  in  our  social 
order  without  being  convinced  that  large  numbers  of 
them  are  denied  some  or  all  of  these  fundamentals 
of  human  living. 

We  find,  for  example,  workmen  who  have  no  security 
in  their  work,  but  are  hired  and  fired  arbitrarily,  or 
perhaps  lose  their  occupation  altogether  for  reasons 
having  no  apparent  relation  to  their  merit.  Very 
commonly  their  work  itself  does  not  admit  of  that  ex- 
ercise of  the  will  and  growth  in  skill  and  power  which 
keeps  the  sense  of  self  alive  and  interested.  And  if 
there  is  nothing  in  the  work  itself,  or  in  appreciation 
by  his  employer,  to  gratify  the  self-feeling  of  the 
worker,  it  may  well  be  that  resentment  and  occasional 
rebellion  are  the  only  way  to  preserve  his  self-respect. 
One  of  the  great  reasons  for  the  popularity  of  strikes 
is  that  they  give  the  suppressed  self  a  sense  of  power. 
For  once  the  human  tool  knows  itself  a  man,  able  to 
stand  up  and  speak  a  word  or  strike  a  blow.  Many 
occupations,   also,   are    of    an    irregular    or    nomadic 

261 


HUMAN    NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

character  which  makes  it  impossible  for  men  and 
women  to  have  that  primary  self-expression  which 
we  get  from  a  family  and  a  settled  home. 

The  immigrant  has  for  the  most  part  been  treated 
purely  as  a  source  of  labor,  with  little  or  no  regard  to 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  human  being,  with  a  self  like  the 
rest  of  us.  There  is  nothing  less  to  our  credit  than  our 
neglect  of  the  foreigner  and  his  children,  unless  it 
be  the  arrogance  most  of  us  betray  when  we  set  out 
to  "americanize"  him. 

The  negro  question  includes  a  similar  situation. 
There  is  no  understanding  it  without  realizing  the 
kind  of  self-feeling  a  race  must  have  who,  in  a  land 
where  men  are  supposed  to  be  equal,  find  themselves 
marked  with  indelible  inferiority.  And  so  with  many 
other  classes;  with  offenders  against  the  law,  for  ex- 
ample, whom  we  often  turn  into  hardened  criminals 
by  a  treatment  which  destroys  their  self-respect — 
or  rather  convinces  them  that  their  only  chance  of 
self-respect  is  in  defiance  of  authority.  The  treat- 
ment of  children,  in  and  out  of  school,  involves  similar 
questions,  and  so  of  domestic  workers,  married  wo- 
men, and  other  sorts  of  people  more  or  less  subject 
to  the  arbitrary  will  of  others.  In  general  only  a 
resolute  exercise  of  sympathetic  imagination,  informed 
by  study  of  the  facts,  will  give  us  a  right  point  of 
view.* 

*  The  modern  study,  aspiring  to  become  a  science,  called 
Psychoanalysis,  endeavors  in  a  more  or  less  systematic  way  to 
investigate  the  history  and  working  of  the  self,  with  a  view  espe- 
cially to  understanding  its  maladies  and  finding  a  cure  forj  them. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  need  for  such  a  study,  or  of  its 

262 


VARIOUS   PHASES  OF   "I" 

greai  practical  use,  even  if  it  does  not  yield  enough  definite 
and  settled  results  to  establish  it  as  a  science.  The  human 
mind  is  indeed  a  cave  swarming  with  strange  forms  of  life,  most 
of  them  unconscious  and  unilluminated.  Unless  we  can  under- 
stand something  as  to  how  the  motives  that  issue  from  this 
obscurity  are  generated,  we  can  hardly  hope  to  foresee  or  con- 
trol them.  The  literature  of  psychoanalysis  is  suggestive  and 
stimulating,  but  the  more  general  theories  to  be  found  in  it  are 
perhaps  onJy  provisional.  A  sociologist  will  note  especially 
the  tendency  to  work  too  directly  from  supposed  instincts, 
without  allowing  for  the  transforming  action  of  social  institu- 
tions and  processes. 


263 


CHAPTER   VII 
HOSTILITY 

BIMPLE  OB  ANIMAL  ANGER — SOCIAL  ANGER — THE  FUNCTION  OP 
HOSTILITY — THE  DOCTRINE  OF  NON-RESISTANCE — CONTROL  AND 
TRANSFORMATION  OF  HOSTILITY  BY  REASON — HOSTILITY  AS 
PLEASURE  OR  PAIN — THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  ACCEPTED  SOCIAL 
STAND  ABDS — FEAB 

I  give  a  chapter  to  Hostility  not  only  because  it  is 
an  important  phase  of  human  nature,  but  because  I 
wish  to  use  it  as  a  type  of  the  development  in  social 
life  of  an  instinctive  emotion.  The  process  of  trans- 
formation here  indicated  goes  on  very  similarly  in  the 
cases  of  fear,  love,  grief,  and  other  emotions  of  which 
I  shall  not  treat  in  detail. 

Anger,  like  other  emotions,  seems  to  exist  at  birth 
as  a  simple,  instinctive  animal  tendency,  and  to  un- 
dergo differentiation  and  development  parallel  with 
the  growth  of  imagination.  Perez,  speaking  of  chil- 
dren at  about  the  age  of  two  months,  says,  "they  be- 
gin to  push  away  objects  that  they  do  not  like,  and 
have  real  fits  of  passion,  frowning,  growing  red  in  the 
face,  trembling  all  over,  and  sometimes  shedding 
tears."  They  also  show  anger  at  not  getting  the 
breast  or  bottle,  or  when  washed  or  undressed,  or 
when  their  toys  are  taken  away.  At  about  one  year 
old  "they  will  beat  people,  animals,  and  inanimate 

264 


HOSTILITY 

objects  if  they  are  angry  with  them,"  *  throw  things 
at  offending  persons,  and  the  like. 

I  have  observed  phenomena  similar  to  these,  and 
no  doubt  all  have  who  have  seen  anything  of  little 
children.  If  there  are  any  writers  who  tend  to  regard 
the  mind  at  birth  as  almost  tabula  rasa  so  far  as  special 
instincts  are  concerned,  consisting  of  little  more  than 
a  faculty  of  receiving  and  organizing  impressions,  it 
must  be  wholesome  for  them  to  associate  with  infants 
and  notice  how  unmistakable  are  the  signs  of  a  dis- 
tinct and  often  violent  emotion,  apparently  identical 
with  the  anger  or  rage  of  adults.  What  grown-up 
persons  feel  seems  to  be  different,  not  in  its  emotional 
essence,  but  in  being  modified  by  association  with  a 
much  more  complicated  system  of  ideas. 

This  simple,  animal  sort  of  anger,  excited  immedi- 
ately by  something  obnoxious  to  the  senses,  does  not 
entirely  disappear  in  adult  life.  Probably  most  per- 
sons who  step  upon  a  barrel-hoop  or  run  their  heads 
against  a  low  doorway  can  discern  a  moment  of  in- 
stinctive anger  toward  the  harming  object.  Even 
our  more  enduring  forms  of  hostility  seem  often  to 
partake  of  this  direct,  unintellectual  character.  Most 
people,  but  especially  those  of  a  sensitive,  impressible 
nature,  have  antipathies  to  places,  animals,  persons, 
words — to  all  sorts  of  things  in  fact — which  appear 
to  spring  directly  out  of  the  subconscious  life,  without 
any  mediation  of  thought.  Some  think  that  an  animal 
or  instinctive  antipathy  to  human  beings  of  a  differ- 
ent race  is  natural  to  all  mankind.  And  among 
*  Perez,  The  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  66. 
265 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

people  of  the  same  race  there  are  undoubtedly  persons 
whom  other  persons  loathe  without  attributing  to 
them  any  hostile  state  of  mind,  but  with  a  merely 
animal  repugnance.  Even  when  the  object  of  hostility 
is  quite  distinctly  a  mental  or  moral  trait,  we  often 
seem  to  feel  it  in  an  external  way,  that  is,  we  see  it 
as  behavior  but  do  not  really  understand  it  as  thought 
or  sentiment.  Thus  duplicity  is  hateful  whether  we 
can  see  any  motive  for  it  or  not,  and  gives  a  sense  of 
slipperiness  and  insecurity  so  tangible  that  one  nat- 
urally thinks  of  some  wriggling  animal.  In  like 
manner  vacillation,  fawning,  excessive  protestation  or 
self-depreciation,  and  many  other  traits,  may  be  ob- 
noxious to  us  in  a  somewhat  physical  way  without 
our  imagining  them  as  states  of  mind. 

But  for  a  social,  imaginative  being,  whose  main 
interests  are  in  the  region  of  communicative  thought 
and  sentiment,  the  chief  field  of  anger,  as  of  other 
emotions,  is  transferred  to  this  region.  Hostility 
ceases  to  be  a  simple  emotion  due  to  a  simple  stimu- 
lus, and  breaks  up  into  innumerable  hostile  sentiments 
associated  with  highly  imaginative  personal  ideas. 
In  this  mentally  higher  form  it  may  be  regarded  as 
hostile  sympathy,  or  a  hostile  comment  on  sympathy. 
That  is  to  say,  we  enter  by  sympathy  or  personal 
imagination  into  the  state  of  mind  of  others,  or  think 
we  do,  and  if  the  thoughts  we  find  there  are  injurious 
to  or  uncongenial  with  the  ideas  we  are  already  cher- 
ishing, we  feel  a  movement  of  anger. 

This  is  forcibly  expressed  in  a  brief  but  admirable 
266 


HOSTILITY 

study  of  antipathy  by  Sophie  Bryant.  Though  the 
antipathy  she  describes  is  of  a  peculiarly  subtle  kind, 
it  is  plain  that  the  same  sort  of  analysis  may  be  ap- 
plied to  any  form  of  imaginative  hostility. 

"A  is  drawn  out  toward  B  to  feel  what  he  feels. 
If  the  new  feeling  harmonizes,  distinctly  or  obscurely, 
with  the  whole  system  of  A's  consciousness — or  the 
part  then  identified  with  his  will — there  follows  that 
joyful  expansion  of  self  beyond  self  which  is  sym- 
pathy. But  if  not — if  the  new  feeling  is  out  of  keep- 
ing with  the  system  of  A's  will — tends  to  upset  the 
system,  and  brings  discord  into  it — there  follows  the 
reaction  of  the  whole  against  the  hostile  part  which, 
transferred  to  its  cause  in  B,  pushes  out  B's  state,  as 
the  antithesis  of  self,  yet  threatening  self,  and  offen- 
sive." Antipathy,  she  says,  "is  full  of  horrid  thrill." 
"The  peculiar  horror  of  the  antipathy  springs  from 
the  unwilling  response  to  the  state  abhorred.  We 
feel  ourselves  actually  like  the  other  person,  selfishly 
vain,  cruelly  masterful,  artfully  affected,  insincere, 
ungenial,  and  so  on."  .  .  .  "There  is  some  affinity 
between  those  who  antipathize."  *  And  with  similar 
meaning  Thoreau  remarks  that  "you  cannot  receive 
a  shock  unless  you  have  an  electric  affinity  for  that 
which  shocks  you,"  and  that  "He  who  receives  an 
injury  is  to  some  extent  an  accomplice  of  the  wrong- 
doer." t 

Thus  the  cause  of  hostility  is  imaginative  or  sym- 
pathetic, an  inimical  idea  attributed  to  another  mind. 

*  Mind,  new  series,  vol.  iv.,  p.  365. 

t  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers,  pp.  303,  328. 

267 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

We  cannot  feel  this  way  toward  that  which  is  totally 
unlike  us,  because  the  totally  unlike  is  unimaginable, 
has  no  interest  for  us.  This,  like  all  social  feeling, 
requires  a  union  of  likeness  with  difference. 

It  is  clear  that  closer  association  and  more  knowl- 
edge of  one  another,  offer  no  security  against  hostile 
feeling.  Whether  intimacy  will  improve  our  senti- 
ment toward  another  man  or  not  depends  upon  the 
true  relation  of  his  way  of  thinking  and  feeling  to  ours, 
which  intimacy  is  likely  to  reveal.  There  are  many 
persons  with  whom  we  get  on  very  well  at  a  certain 
distance,  who  would  turn  out  intensely  antipathetic 
if  we  had  to  live  in  the  same  house  with  them.  Prob- 
ably all  of  us  have  experienced  in  one  form  or  another 
the  disgust  and  irritation  that  may  come  from  enforced 
intimacy  with  people  we  liked  well  enough  as  mere 
acquaintances,  and  with  whom  we  can  find  no  par- 
ticular fault,  except  that  they  rub  us  the  wrong  way. 
Henry  James,  speaking  of  the  aversion  of  the  brothers 
Goncourt  for  Sainte-Beuve,  remarks  that  it  was  "a 
plant  watered  by  frequent  intercourse  and  protected 
by  punctual  notes."  *  It  is  true  that  an  active  sense 
of  justice  may  do  much  to  overcome  unreasonable 
antipathies;  but  there  are  so  many  urgent  uses  for  our 
sense  of  justice  that  it  is  well  not  to  fatigue  it  by  ex- 
cessive and  unnecessary  activity.  Justice  involves  a 
strenuous  and  symmetrical  exercise  of  the  imagina- 
tion and  reason,  which  no  one  can  keep  up  all  the  time; 
and  those  who  display  it  most  on  important  occasions 
ought  to  be  free  to  indulge  somewhat  their  whims 
and  prejudices  in  familiar  intercourse. 

*  See  his  essay  on  the  Journal  of  the  Brothers  Goncourt. 
268 


HOSTILITY 

Neither  do  refinement,  culture,  and  taste  have  any 
necessary  tendency  to  diminish  hostility.  They  make 
a  richer  and  finer  sympathy  possible,  but  at  the  same 
time  multiply  the  possible  occasions  of  antipathy. 
They  are  like  a  delicate  sense  of  smell,  which  opens 
the  way  to  as  much  disgust  as  appreciation.  Instead 
of  the  most  sensitive  sympathy,  the  finest  mental 
texture,  being  a  safeguard  against  hostile  passions,  it 
is  only  too  evident  from  a  study  of  the  lives  of  men  of 
genius  that  these  very  traits  make  a  sane  and  equable 
existence  peculiarly  difficult.  Read,  for  instance, 
the  confessions  of  Rousseau,  and  observe  how  a  fine 
nature,  full  of  genuine  and  eager  social  idealism,  is 
subject  to  peculiar  sufferings  and  errors  through  the 
sensibility  and  imagination  such  a  nature  must  possess. 
The  quicker  the  sympathy  and  ideality,  the  greater 
the  suffering  from  neglect  and  failure,  the  greater  also 
the  difficulty  of  disciplining  the  multitude  of  intense 
impressions  and  maintaining  a  sane  view  of  the  whole. 
Hence  the  pessimism,  the  extravagant  indignation 
against  real  or  supposed  wrong-doers,  and  not  infre- 
quently, as  in  Rousseau's  case,  the  almost  insane  bit- 
terness of  jealousy  and  mistrust. 

The  commonest  forms  of  imaginative  hostility  are 
grounded  on  social  self-feeling,  and  come  under  the 
head  of  resentment.  We  impute  to  the  other  per- 
son an  injurious  thought  regarding  something  which 
we  cherish  as  a  part  of  our  self,  and  this  awakens  an- 
ger, which  we  name  pique,  animosity,  umbrage, 
estrangement,  soreness,  bitterness,  heart-burning,  jeal- 
ousy, indignation,  and  so  on;  in  accordance  with  varia- 
tions which  these  words  suggest.     They  all  rest  upon 

269 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  feeling  that  the  other  person  harbors  ideas  injurious 
to  us,  so  that  the  thought  of  him  is  an  attack  upon 
our  self.  Suppose,  for  instance,  there  is  a  person  who 
has  reason  to  believe  that  he  has  caught  me  in  a  lie. 
It  makes  little  difference,  perhaps,  whether  he  really 
has  or  not;  so  long  as  I  have  any  self-respect  left,  and 
believe  that  he  entertains  this  depreciatory  idea  of  me, 
I  must  resent  the  idea  whenever,  through  my  thinking 
of  him,  it  enters  my  mind.  Or  suppose  there  is  a  man 
who  has  met  me  running  in  panic  from  the  field  of 
battle;  would  it  not  be  hard  not  to  hate  him?  These 
situations  are  perhaps  unusual,  but  we  all  know  per- 
sons to  whom  we  attribute  depreciation  of  our  char- 
acters, our  friends,  our  children,  our  workmanship, 
our  cherished  creed  or  philanthropy;  and  we  do  not 
like  them. 

The  resentment,  of  charity  or  pity  is  a  good  instance 
of  hostile  sympathy.  If  a  man  has  self-respect,  he 
feels  insulted  by  the  depreciating  view  of  his  manhood 
implied  in  commiserating  him  or  offering  him  alms. 
Self-respect  means  that  one's  reflected  self  is  up  to  the 
social  standard:  and  the  social  standard  requires  that 
a  man  should  not  need  pity  or  alms  except  under  very 
unusual  conditions.  So  the  assumption  that  he  does 
need  them  is  an  injury — whether  he  does  or  not — 
precisely  as  it  is  an  insult  to  a  woman  to  commiserate 
her  ugliness  and  bad  taste,  and  suggest  that  she  wear 
a  veil  or  employ  some  one  to  select  her  gowns.  The 
curious  may  find  interest  in  questions  like  this:  whether 
a  tramp  can  have  self-respect  unless  he  deceives  the 
one  who  gives  him  aid,  and  so  feels  superior  to  him, 

270 


HOSTILITY 

and  not  a  mere  dependent.  In  the  same  way  we  can 
easily  see  why  criminals  look  down  upon  paupers. 

The  word  indignation  suggests  a  higher  sort  of 
imaginative  hostility.  It  implies  that  the  feeling  is 
directed  toward  some  attack  upon  a  standard  of  right, 
and  is  not  merely  an  impulse  like  jealousy  or  pique. 
A  higher  degree  of  rationalization  is  involved;  there 
is  some  notion  of  a  reasonable  adjustment  of  personal 
claims,  which  the  act  or  thought  in  question  violates. 
We  frequently  perceive  that  the  simpler  forms  of  re- 
sentment have  no  rational  basis,  could  not  be  justified 
in  open  court,  but  indignation  always  claims  a  general 
or  social  foundation.  We  feel  indignant  when  we 
think  that  favoritism  and  not  merit  secures  promotion, 
when  the  rich  man  gets  a  pass  on  the  railroad,  and  so 
on. 

It  is  thus  possible  rudely  to  classify  hostilities  under 
three  heads,  according  to  the  degree  of  mental  organi- 
zation they  involve;  namely,  as 

1.  Primary,  immediate,  or  animal. 

2.  Social,  sympathetic,  imaginative,  or  personal,  of 
a  comparatively  direct  sort,  that  is,  without  reference 
to  any  standard  of  justice. 

3.  Rational  or  ethical;  similar  to  the  last  but  in- 
volving reference  to  a  standard  of  justice  and  the 
sanction  of  conscience. 

The  function  of  hostility  is,  no  doubt,  to  awaken  a 
fighting  energy,  to  contribute  an  emotional  motive 
force  to  activities  of  self-preservation  or  aggrandize- 
ment. 

271 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

In  its  immediate  or  animal  form  this  is  obvious 
enough.  The  wave  of  passion  that  possesses  a  fight- 
ing dog  stimulates  and  concentrates  his  energy  upon 
a  few  moments  of  struggle  in  which  success  or  failure 
may  be  life  or  death;  and  the  simple,  violent  anger  of 
children  and  impulsive  adults  is  evidently  much  the 
same  thing.  Vital  force  explodes  in  a  flash  of  aggres- 
sion; the  mind  has  no  room  for  anything  but  the  fierce 
instinct.  It  is  clear  that  hostility  of  this  uncon- 
trolled sort  is  proper  to  a  very  simple  state  of  society 
and  of  warfare,  and  is  likely  to  be  a  source  of  distur- 
bance and  weakness  in  that  organized  state  which 
calls  for  corresponding  organization  in  the  individual 
mind. 

There  is  a  transition  by  imperceptible  degrees  from 
the  blind  anger  that  thinks  of  nothing  to  the  imagi- 
native anger  that  thinks  of  persons,  and  pursues  the 
personal  idea  into  all  possible  degrees  of  subtlety  and 
variety.  The  passion  itself,  the  way  we  feel  when  we 
are  angry,  does  not  seem  to  change  much,  except, 
perhaps,  in  intensity,  the  change  being  mostly  in  the 
idea  that  awakens  it.  It  is  as  if  anger  were  a  strong 
and  peculiar  flavor  which  might  be  taken  with  the 
simplest  food  or  the  most  elaborate,  might  be  used 
alone,  strong  and  plain,  or  in  the  most  curious  and 
recondite  combinations  with  other  flavors. 

While  it  is  evident  enough  that  animal  anger  is  one 
of  those  instincts  that  are  readily  explained  as  con- 
ducive to  self-preservation,  it  is  not,  perhaps,  so  ob- 
vious that  socialized  anger  has  any  such  justification. 
I  think,  however,  that,  though  very  liable  to  be  ex- 

272 


HOSTILITY 

cessive  and  unmanageable,  and  tending  continually 
to  be  economized  as  the  race  progresses,  so  that  most 
forms  of  it  are  properly  regarded  as  wrong,  it  never- 
theless plays  an  indispensable  part  in  life. 

The  mass  of  mankind  are  sluggish  and  need  some 
resentment  as  a  stimulant;  this  is  its  function  on  the 
higher  plane  of  life  as  it  is  on  the  lower.  Surround 
a  man  with  soothing,  flattering  circumstances,  and  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  will  fail  to  do  anything  worthy, 
but  will  lapse  into  some  form  of  sensualism  or  dilet- 
tanteism.  There  is  no  tonic,  to  a  nature  substantial 
enough  to  bear  it,  like  chagrin — "  erquickender  Ver- 
druss,"  as  Goethe  says.  Life  without  opposition  is 
Capua.  No  matter  what  the  part  one  is  fitted  to 
play  in  it,  he  can  make  progress  in  his  path  only  by  a 
vigorous  assault  upon  the  obstacles,  and  to  be  vigorous 
the  assault  must  be  supported  by  passion  of  some  sort. 
With  most  of  us  the  requisite  intensity  of  passion  is 
not  forthcoming  without  an  element  of  resentment; 
and  common  sense  and  careful  observation  will,  I 
believe,  confirm  the  opinion  that  few  people  who 
amount  to  much  are  without  a  good  capacity  for  hos- 
tile feeling,  upon  which  they  draw  freely  when  they 
need  it.  This  would  be  more  readily  admitted  if 
many  people  were  not  without  the  habit  of  penetrat- 
ing observation,  either  of  themselves  or  others,  in  such 
matters,  and  so  are  enabled  to  believe  that  anger, 
which  is  conventionally  held  to  be  wrong,  has  no  place 
in  the  motives  of  moral  persons. 

I  have  in  mind  a  man  who  is  remarkable  for  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  aggressive,  tenacious,  and  successful  pur- 

273 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

suit  of  the  right.  He  does  the  things  that  every  one 
else  agrees  ought  to  be  done  but  does  not  do — espe- 
cially things  involving  personal  antagonism.  While 
the  other  people  deplore  the  corruption  of  politics, 
but  have  no  stomach  to  amend  it,  he  is  the  man  to 
beard  the  corrupt  official  in  his  ward,  or  expose  him 
in  the  courts  or  the  public  press — all  at  much  pains 
and  cost  to  himself  and  without  prospect  of  honor 
or  any  other  recompense.  If  one  considers  how  he 
differs  from  other  conscientious  people  of  equal  ability 
and  opportunity,  it  appears  to  be  largely  in  having 
more  bile  in  him.  He  has  a  natural  fund  of  animosity, 
and  instead  of  spending  it  blindly  and  harmfully,  he 
directs  it  upon  that  which  is  hateful  to  the  general 
good,  thus  gratifying  his  native  turn  for  resentment 
in  a  moral  and  fruitful  way.  Evidently  if  there  were 
more  men  of  this  stamp  it  would  be  of  benefit  to  the 
moral  condition  of  the  country.  Contemporary  con- 
ditions seem  to  tend  somewhat  to  dissipate  that 
righteous  wrath  against  evil  which,  intelligently  di- 
rected, is  a  main  instrument  of  progress. 

Thomas  Huxley,  to  take  a  name  known  to  all,  was 
a  man  in  whom  there  was  much  fruitful  hostility. 
He  did  not  seek  controversy,  but  when  the  enemies  of 
truth  offered  battle  he  felt  no  inclination  to  refuse; 
and  he  avowed — perhaps  with  a  certain  zest  in  con- 
travening conventional  teaching — that  he  loved  his 
friends  and  hated  his  enemies.*  His  hatred  was  of 
a  noble  sort,  and  the  reader  of  his  Life  and  Letters 
can  hardly  doubt  that  he  was  a  good  as  well  as  a 
*  See  his  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  ii,  p.  192. 
274 


HOSTILITY 

great  man,  or  that  his  pugnacity  helped  him  to  be 
such.  Indeed  I  do  not  think  that  science  or  letters 
could  do  without  the  spirit  of  opposition,  although 
much  energy  is  dissipated  and  much  thought  clouded 
by  it.  Even  men  like  Darwin  or  Emerson,  who  seem 
to  wish  nothing  more  than  to  live  at  peace  with  every 
one,  may  be  observed  to  develop  their  views  with  un- 
usual fulness  and  vigor  where  they  are  most  in  oppo- 
sition to  authority.  There  is  something  analogous  to 
political  parties  in  all  intellectual  activity;  opinion 
divides,  more  or  less  definitely,  into  opposing  groups, 
and  each  side  is  stimulated  by  the  opposition  of  the 
other  to  define,  corroborate,  and  amend  its  views,  with 
the  purpose  of  justifying  itself  before  the  constituency 
to  which  it  appeals.  What  we  need  is  not  that  contro- 
versy should  disappear,  but  that  it  should  be  carried 
on  with  sincere  and  absolute  deference  to  the  standard 
of  truth. 

A  just  resentment  is  not  only  a  needful  stimulus  to 
aggressive  righteousness,  but  has  also  a  wholesome 
effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  person  against  whom  it  is 
directed,  by  awakening  a  feeling  of  the  importance  of 
the  sentiments  he  has  trangressed.  On  the  higher 
planes  of  life  an  imaginative  sense  that  there  is  re- 
sentment in  the  minds  of  other  persons  performs  the 
same  function  that  physical  resistance  does  upon  the 
lower.*  It  is  an  attack  upon  my  mental  self,  and  as 
a  sympathetic  and  imaginative  being  I  feel  it  more 
than  I  would  a  mere  blow;  it  forces  me  to  consider  the 

*  Compare  Professor  Simon  N.  Patten's  Theory  of  Social 
Forces,  p.  135. 

275 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

other's  view,  and  either  to  accept  it  or  to  bear  it  down 
by  the  stronger  claims  of  a  different  one.  Thus  it 
enters  potently  into  our  moral  judgments. 

"Let  such  pure  hate  still  underprop 
Our  love  that  we  may  be 
Each  other's  conscience."  * 

I  think  that  no  one's  character  and  aims  can  be 
respected  unless  he  is  perceived  to  be  capable  of  some 
sort  of  resentment.  We  feel  that  if  he  is  really  in 
earnest  about  anything  he  should  feel  hostile  emotion 
if  it  is  attacked,  and  if  he  gives  no  sign  of  this,  either 
at  the  moment  of  attack  or  later,  he  and  what  he  rep- 
resents become  despised.  No  teacher,  for  instance, 
can  maintain  discipline  unless  his  scholars  feel  that  he 
will  in  some  manner  resent  a  breach  of  it. 

Thus  we  seldom  feel  keenly  that  our  acts  are  wrong 
until  we  perceive  that  they  arouse  some  sort  of  resent- 
ment in  others,  and  whatever  selfish  aggression  we 
can  practise  without  arousing  resistance,  we  presently 
come  to  look  upon  as  a  matter  of  course.  Judging 
the  matter  from  my  own  consciousness  and  experience, 
I  have  no  belief  in  the  theory  that  non-resistance  has, 
as  a  rule,  a  mollifying  influence  upon  the  aggressor. 
I  do  not  wish  people  to  turn  me  the  other  cheek  when 
I  smite  them,  because,  in  most  cases,  that  has  a  bad 
effect  upon  me.  I  am  soon  used  to  submission  and 
may  come  to  think  no  more  of  the  unresisting  sufferer 
than  I  do  of  the  sheep  whose  flesh  I  eat  at  dinner. 
*  Thoreau,  A  Week,  etc.,  p.  304. 
27G 


HOSTILITY 

Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  am  I  helped  bjr  extrava- 
gant and  accusatory  opposition;  that  is  likely  to  put 
me  into  a  state  of  unreasoning  anger.  But  it  is  good 
for  us  that  every  one  should  maintain  his  rights,  and 
the  rights  of  others  with  whom  he  sympathizes,  ex- 
hibiting a  just  and  firm  resentment  against  any  at- 
tempt to  tread  upon  them.  A  consciousness,  based 
on  experience,  that  the  transgression  of  moral  stand- 
ards will  arouse  resentment  in  the  minds  of  those 
whose  opinion  we  respect,  is  a  main  force  in  the  up- 
holding of  such  standards. 

But  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  like  all  ideas 
that  have  appealed  to  good  minds,  has  a  truth  wrapped 
up  in  it,  notwithstanding  what  appears  to  be  its  flagrant 
absurdity.  What  the  doctrine  really  means,  as  taught 
in  the  New  Testament  and  by  many  individuals  and 
societies  in  our  own  day,  is  perhaps  no  more  than 
this,  that  we  should  discard  the  coarser  weapons  of 
resistance  for  the  finer,  and  threaten  a  moral  resent- 
ment instead  of  blows  or  lawsuits.  It  is  quite  true 
that  we  can  best  combat  what  we  regard  as  evil  in 
another  person  of  ordinary  sensibility  by  attacking  the 
higher  phases  of  his  self  rather  than  the  lower.  If  a 
man  appears  to  be  about  to  do  something  brutal  or 
dishonest,  we  may  either  encounter  him  on  his  present 
low  plane  of  life  by  knocking  him  down  or  calling  a 
policeman,  or  we  may  try  to  work  upon  his  higher 
consciousness  by  giving  him  to  understand  that  we  feel 
sure  a  person  of  his  self-respect  and  good  repute  will 
not  degrade  himself,  but  that  if  anything  so  improba- 
ble and  untoward  should  occur,  he  must,  of  course, 

277 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

expect  the  disappointment  and  contempt  of  those  who 
before  thought  well  of  him.  In  other  words,  we 
threaten,  as  courteously  as  possible,  his  social  self. 
This  method  is  often  much  more  efficient  than  the 
other,  is  morally  edifying  instead  of  degrading,  and  is 
practised  by  men  of  address  who  make  no  claim  to 
unusual  virtue. 

This  seems  to  be  what  is  meant  by  non-resistance; 
but  the  name  is  misleading.  It  is  resistance,  and  di- 
rected at  what  is  believed  to  be  the  enemy's  weakest 
point.  As  a  matter  of  strategy  it  is  an  attack  upon 
his  flank,  aggression  upon  an  unprotected  part  of  his 
position.  Its  justification,  in  the  long  run,  is  in  its 
success.  If  we  do  not  succeed  in  making  our  way 
into  the  other  man's  mind  and  changing  his  point  of 
view  by  substituting  our  own,  the  whole  manoeuvre 
falls  flat,  the  injury  is  done,  the  ill-doer  is  confirmed 
in  his  courses,  and  you  would  better  have  knocked 
him  down.  It  is  good  to  appeal  to  the  highest  motives 
we  can  arouse,  and  to  exercise  a  good  deal  of  faith  as 
to  what  can  be  aroused,  but  real  non-resistance  to 
what  we  believe  to  be  wrong  is  mere  pusillanimity. 
There  is  perhaps  no  important  sect  or  teacher  that 
really  inculcates  such  a  doctrine,  the  name  non-re- 
sistance being  given  to  attacks  upon  the  higher  self 
under  the  somewhat  crude  impression  that  resistance 
is  not  such  unless  it  takes  some  obvious  material  form, 
and  probably  all  teachers  would  be  found  to  vary  their 
tactics  somewhat  according  to  the  sort  of  people  with 
whom  they  are  dealing.  Although  Christ  taught  the 
turning  of  the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  and  that  the 

278 


HOSTILITY 

coat  should  follow  the  cloak,  it  does  not  appear  that 
he  suggested  to  those  who  were  desecrating  the  Temple 
that  they  should  double  their  transactions,  but,  ap- 
parently regarding  them  as  beyond  the  reach  of  moral 
suasion,  he  "went  into  the  Temple,  and  began  to  cast 
out  them  that  sold  and  bought  in  the  Temple,  and 
overthrew  the  tables  of  the  money-changers  and  the 
seats  of  them  that  sold  doves."  It  seems  that  he  even 
used  a  scourge  on  this  occasion.  I  cannot  see  much 
in  the  question  regarding  non-resistance  beyond  a 
vague  use  of  terms  and  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
what  kind  of  resistance  is  most  effective  in  certain 
cases. 

It  is  easy  and  not  uncommon  to  state  too  exclu- 
sively the  pre-eminence  of  affection  in  human  ideals. 
No  one,  I  suppose,  believes  that  the  life  of  Fra  An- 
gelico's  angels,  such  as  we  see  them  in  his  "Last  Judg- 
ment," circling  on  the  flowery  sward  of  Paradise, 
would  long  content  any  normal  human  creature.  If 
it  appears  beautiful  and  desirable  at  times,  this  is 
perhaps  because  our  world  is  one  in  which  the  supply 
of  amity  and  peace  mostly  falls  short  of  the  demand 
for  them.  Many  of  us  have  seen  times  of  heat  and 
thirst  when  it  seemed  as  if  a  bit  of  shade  and  a  draft 
of  cold  water  would  appease  all  earthly  wants.  But 
when  we  had  the  shade  and  the  water  we  presently 
began  to  think  about  something  else.  So  with  these 
ideals  of  unbroken  peace  and  affection.  Even  for 
those  sensitive  spirits  that  most  cherish  them,  they 
would  hardly  suffice  as  a  continuity.  An  indiscrimi- 
nate and  unvarying  amity  is,  after  all,  disgusting. 

279 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Human  ideals  and  human  nature  must  develop  to- 
gether, and  we  cannot  foresee  what  either  may  be- 
come ;  but  for  the  present  it  would  seem  that  an  honest 
and  reasonable  idealism  must  look  rather  to  the  or- 
ganization and  control  of  all  passions  with  reference 
to  some  conception  of  right,  than  to  the  expulsion  of 
some  passions  by  others.  I  doubt  whether  any  healthy 
and  productive  love  can  exist  which  is  not  resentment 
on  its  obverse  side.  How  can  we  rightly  care  for  any- 
thing without  in  some  way  resenting  attacks  upon  it? 

Apparently,  the  higher  function  of  hostility  is  to 
put  down  wrong;  and  to  fulfil  this  function  it  must 
be  rationally  controlled  with  a  view  to  ideals  of  jus- 
tice. In  so  far  as  a  man  has  a  sound  and  active  social 
imagination,  he  will  feel  the  need  of  this  control,  and 
will  tend  with  more  or  less  energy,  according  to  the 
vigor  of  his  mind,  to  limit  his  resentment  to  that  which 
his  judgment  tells  him  is  really  unjust  or  wrong. 
Imagination  presents  us  with  all  sorts  of  conflicting 
views,  which  reason,  whose  essence  is  organization, 
tries  to  arrange  and  control  in  accordance  with  some 
unifying  principle,  some  standard  of  equity:  moral 
principles  result  from  the  mind's  instinctive  need  to 
achieve  unity  of  view.  All  special  impulses,  and  hos- 
tile feeling  among  them,  are  brought  to  the  bar  of  con- 
science and  judged  by  such  standards  as  the  mind  has 
worked  out.  If  declared  right  or  justifiable,  resent- 
ment is  indorsed  and  enforced  by  the  will;  we  think 
of  it  as  righteous  and  perhaps  take  credit  with  our- 
selves for  it.     But  if  it  appears  grounded  on  no  broad 

280 


HOSTILITY 

and  unifying  principle,  our  larger  thought  disowns  it, 
and  tends  with  such  energy  as  it  may  have  to  ignore 
and  suppress  it.  Thus  we  overlook  accidental  injury, 
we  control  or  avoid  mere  antipathy,  but  we  act  upon 
indignation.  The  latter  is  enduring  and  powerful 
because  consistent  with  cool  thought;  while  impulsive, 
unreasoning  anger,  getting  no  reinforcement  from  such 
thought,  has  little  lasting  force. 

Suppose,  for  illustration,  one  goes  with  a  request  to 
some  person  in  authority,  and  meets  a  curt  refusal. 
The  first  feeling  is  doubtless  one  of  blind,  unthinking 
anger  at  the  rebuff.  Immediately  after  that  the  mind 
busies  itself  more  deeply  with  the  matter,  imagining 
motives,  ascribing  feelings,  and  the  like;  and  anger 
takes  a  more  bitter  and  personal  form,  it  rankles  where 
at  first  it  only  stung.  But  if  one  is  a  fairly  reasonable 
man,  accustomed  to  refer  things  to  standards  of  right, 
one  presently  grows  calmer  and,  continuing  the  imagi- 
native process  in  a  broader  way,  endeavors  to  put 
himself  at  the  other  person's  point  of  view  and  see 
what  justification,  if  any,  there  is  for  the  latter's  con- 
duct. Possibly  he  is  one  subject  to  constant  solici- 
tation, with  whom  coldness  and  abruptness  are  neces- 
sary to  the  despatch  of  business — and  so  on.  If  the 
explanation  seems  insufficient,  so  that  his  rudeness 
still  appears  to  be  mere  insolence,  our  resentment 
against  him  lasts,  reappearing  whenever  we  think 
of  him,  so  that  we  are  likely  to  thwart  him  somehow 
if  we  get  a  chance,  and  justify  our  action  to  ourselves 
and  others  on  grounds  of  moral  disapproval. 

Or  suppose  one  has  to  stand  in  line  at  the  post- 
281 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

office,  with  a  crowd  of  other  people,  waiting  to  get  his 
mail.  There  are  delay  and  discomfort  to  be  borne; 
but  these  he  will  take  with  composure  because  he  sees 
that  they  are  a  part  of  the  necessary  conditions  of  the 
situation,  which  all  must  submit  to  alike.  Suppose, 
however,  that  while  patiently  waiting  his  turn  he 
notices  some  one  else,  who  has  come  in  later,  edging 
into  the  line  ahead  of  him.  Then  he  will  certainly 
be  angry.  The  delay  threatened  is  only  a  matter  of 
a  few  seconds;  but  here  is  a  question  of  justice,  a 
case  for  indignation,  a  chance  for  anger  to  come  forth 
with  the  sanction  of  thought. 

Another  phase  of  the  transformation  of  hostility 
by  reason  and  imagination,  is  that  it  tends  to  become 
more  discriminating  or  selective  as  regards  its  rela- 
tion to  the  idea  of  the  person  against  whom  it  is  di- 
rected. In  a  sense  the  higher  hostility  is  less  personal 
than  the  lower;  that  is,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  no  longer 
aimed  blindly  at  persons  as  wholes,  but  distinguishes 
in  some  measure  between  phases  or  tendencies  of 
them  that  are  obnoxious  and  others  that  are  not.  It 
is  not  the  mere  thought  of  X's  countenance,  or  other 
symbol,  that  arouses  resentment,  but  the  thought  of 
him  as  exhibiting  insincerity,  or  arrogance,  or  what- 
ever else  it  may  be  that  we  do  not  like;  while  we  may 
preserve  a  liking  for  him  as  exhibiting  other  traits. 
Generally  speaking,  all  persons  have  much  in  them 
which,  if  imagined,  must  appear  amiable;  so  that  if 
we  feel  only  animosity  toward  a  man  it  must  be  be- 
cause we  have  apprehended  him  only  in  a  partial 
aspect.     An  undisciplined  anger,  like  any  other  un- 

282 


HOSTILITY 

disciplined  emotion,  always  tends  to  produce  these 
partial  and  indiscriminate  notions,  because  it  over- 
whelms symmetrical  thought  and  permits  us  to  see 
only  that  which  agrees  with  itself.  But  a  more  chast- 
ened sentiment  allows  a  juster  view,  so  that  it  becomes 
conceivable  that  we  should  love  our  enemies  as  well 
as  antagonize  the  faults  of  our  friends.  A  just  parent 
or  teacher  will  resent  the  insubordinate  behavior  of  a 
child  or  pupil  without  letting  go  of  affection,  and  the 
same  principle  holds  good  as  regards  criminals,  and 
all  proper  objects  of  hostility.  The  attitude  of  so- 
ciety toward  its  delinquent  members  should  be  stern, 
yet  sympathetic,  like  that  of  a  father  toward  a  diso- 
bedient child. 

It  is  the  tendency  of  modern  life,  by  educating  the 
imagination  and  rendering  all  sorts  of  people  con- 
ceivable, to  discredit  the  sweeping  conclusions  of  im- 
pulsive thought — as,  for  instance,  that  all  who  com- 
mit violence  or  theft  are  hateful  ill-doers,  and  nothing 
more — and  to  make  us  feel  the  fundamental  likeness 
of  human  nature  wherever  found.  Resentment  against 
ill-doing  should  by  no  means  disappear;  but  while 
continuing  to  suppress  wrong  by  whatever  means 
proves  most  efficacious,  we  shall  perhaps  see  more  and 
more  clearly  that  the  people  who  are  guilty  of  it  are 
very  much  like  ourselves,  and  are  acting  from  motives 
to  which  we  also  are  subject. 

It  is  often  asserted  or  assumed  that  hostile  feeling 
is  in  its  very  nature  obnoxious  and  painful  to  the 
human  mind,  and  persists  in  spite  of  us,  as  it  were, 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

because  it  is  forced  upon  us  by  the  competitive  con- 
ditions of  existence.  This  view  seems  to  me  hardly 
sound.  I  should  rather  say  that  the  mental  and 
social  harmfulness  of  anger,  in  common  experience,  is 
due  not  so  much  to  its  peculiar  character  as  hostile 
feeling,  as  to  the  fact  that,  like  lust,  it  is  so  surcharged 
with  instinctive  energy  as  to  be  difficult  to  control 
and  limit  to  its  proper  function;  while,  if  not  properly 
disciplined,  it  of  course  introduces  disorder  and  pain 
into  the  mental  life. 

To  a  person  in  robust  condition,  with  plenty  of 
energy  to  spare,  a  thoroughgoing  anger,  far  from 
being  painful,  is  an  expansive,  I  might  say  glorious, 
experience,  while  the  fit  is  on  and  has  full  control.  A 
man  in  a  rage  does  not  want  to  get  out  of  it,  but  has 
a  full  sense  of  life  which  he  impulsively  seeks  to  con- 
tinue by  repelling  suggestions  tending  to  calm  him. 
It  is  only  when  it  has  begun  to  pall  upon  him  that  he 
is  really  willing  to  be  appeased.  This  may  be  seen 
by  observing  the  behavior  of  impulsive  children,  and 
also  of  adults  whose  passions  are  undisciplined. 

An  enduring  hatred  may  also  be  a  source  of  satis- 
faction to  some  minds,  though  this  I  believe  to  be 
unusual  in  these  days,  and  becoming  more  so.  One 
who  reads  Hazlitt's  powerful  and  sincere,  though  per- 
haps unhealthy,  essay  on  the  Pleasure  of  Hating, 
will  see  that  the  thing  is  possible.  In  most  cases  re- 
morse and  distress  set  in  so  soon  as  the  fit  of  anger 
begins  to  abate,  and  its  destructive  incompatibility 
with  the  established  order  and  harmony  of  the  mind 

284 


HOSTILITY 

begins  to  be  felt.  There  is  a  conviction  of  sin,  the 
pain  of  a  shattered  ideal,  just  as  there  is  after  yield- 
ing to  any  other  unchastened  passion.  The  cause  of 
the  pain  seems  to  be  not  so  much  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  the  feeling  as  its  exorbitant  intensity. 

Any  simple  and  violent  passion  is  likely  to  be  felt 
as  painful  and  wrong  in  its  after-effects  because  it 
destroys  that  harmony  or  synthesis  that  reason  and 
conscience  strive  to  produce;  and  this  effect  is  prob- 
ably more  and  more  felt  as  the  race  advances  and 
mental  life  becomes  more  complex.  The  conditions 
of  civilization  require  of  us  so  extensive  and  continu- 
ous an  expenditure  of  psychical  force,  that  we  no 
longer  have  the  superabundance  of  emotional  energy 
that  makes  a  violent  outlet  agreeable.  Habits  and 
principles  of  self-control  naturally  arise  along  with 
the  increasing  need  for  economy  and  rational  guid- 
ance of  emotion;  and  whatever  breaks  through  them 
causes  exhaustion  and  remorse.  Any  gross  passion 
comes  to  be  felt  as  "the  expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of 
shame."  Spasms  of  violent  feeling  properly  belong 
with  a  somewhat  apathetic  habit  of  life,  whose  accu- 
mulating energies  they  help  to  dissipate,  and  are  as 
much  out  of  place  to-day  as  the  hard-drinking  habits 
of  our  Saxon  ancestors. 

The  sort  of  men  that  most  feel  the  need  of  hostility 
as  a  spur  to  exertion  are,  I  imagine,  those  of  super- 
abundant vitality  and  somewhat  sluggish  tempera- 
ment, like  Goethe  and  Bismarck,  both  of  whom  de- 
clared that  it  was  essential  to  them.     There  is  also  a 

285 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

great  deal  of  old-fashioned  personal  hatred  in  remote 
and  quiet  places,  like  the  mountains  of  North  Caro- 
lina, and  probably  among  all  classes  who  do  not  much 
feel  the  stress  of  civilization.  But  to  most  of  those 
who  share  fully  in  the  life  of  the  time,  intense  personal 
animosities  are  painful  and  destructive,  and  many  fine 
spirits  are  ruined  by  failure  to  inhibit  them. 

The  kind  of  man  most  characteristic  of  these  times, 
I  take  it,  does  not  allow  himself  to  be  drawn  into 
the  tangle  of  merely  personal  hatred,  but,  cultivating 
a  tolerance  for  all  sorts  of  men,  he  yet  maintains  a 
sober  and  determined  antagonism  toward  all  tenden- 
cies or  purposes  that  conflict  with  his  true  self,  with 
whatever  he  has  most  intimately  appropriated  and 
identified  with  his  character.  He  is  always  courte- 
ous, cherishes  as  much  as  possible  those  kindly  senti- 
ments which  are  not  only  pleasant  and  soothing  but 
do  much  to  oil  the  machinery  of  his  enterprises,  and 
by  wasting  no  energy  on  futile  passion  is  enabled  to 
think  all  the  more  clearly  and  act  the  more  inflexibly 
when  he  finds  antagonism  necessary.  A  man  of  the 
world  of  the  modern  type  is  hardly  ever  dramatic  in 
the  style  of  Shakespeare's  heroes.  He  usually  ex- 
presses himself  in  the  most  economical  manner  pos- 
sible, and  if  he  has  to  threaten,  for  instance,  knows 
how  to  do  it  by  a  movement  of  the  lips,  or  the  turn  of 
a  phrase  in  a  polite  note.  If  cruder  and  more  violent 
tactics  are  necessary,  to  impress  vulgar  minds,  he  is 
very  likely  to  depute  this  rough  work  to  a  subordinate. 
A  foreman  of  track  hands  may  have  to  be  a  loud- 
voiced,  strong-armed,  palpably  aggressive  person;  but 

286 


HOSTILITY 

the  president  of  the  road  is  commonly  quiet  and  mild- 
mannered. 

The  mind  is  greatly  aided  in  the  control  of  ani- 
mosity by  the  existence  of  ready-made  and  socially 
accepted  standards  of  right.  Suffering  from  his  own 
angry  passions  and  from  those  of  others,  one  looks 
out  for  some  criterion,  some  rule  of  what  is  just  and 
fair  among  persons,  which  he  may  hold  himself  and 
others  to,  and  moderate  antagonism  by  removing  the 
sense  of  peculiar  injury.  Opposition  itself,  within 
certain  limits,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  part  of  the 
reasonable  order  of  things.  In  this  view  the  function 
of  moral  standards  is  the  same  as  that  of  courts  of 
justice  in  grosser  conflicts.  All  good  citizens  want  the 
laws  to  be  definite  and  vigorously  enforced,  in  order 
to  avoid  the  uncertainty,  waste,  and  destruction  of  a 
lawless  condition.  In  the  same  way  right-minded 
people  want  definite  moral  standards,  enforced  by 
general  opinion,  in  order  to  save  the  mental  wear  and 
tear  of  unguided  feeling.  It  is  a  great  relief  to  a 
person  harassed  by  hostile  emotion  to  find  a  point  of 
view  from  which  this  emotion  appears  wrong  or  irra- 
tional, so  that  he  can  proceed  definitely  and  with  the 
sanction  of  his  reason  to  put  it  down.  The  next  best 
thing,  perhaps,  is  to  have  the  hostility  definitely  ap- 
proved by  reason,  so  that  he  may  indulge  it  without 
further  doubt.  The  unsettled  condition  is  worst  of 
all. 

This  control  of  hostility  by  a  sense  of  common 
allegiance  to  rule  is  well  illustrated  by  athletic  games. 

287 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

When  properly  conducted  they  proceed  upon  a  defi- 
nite understanding  of  what  is  fair,  and  no  lasting 
anger  is  felt  for  any  hurts  inflicted,  so  long  as  this 
standard  of  fairness  is  maintained.  It  is  the  same 
in  war:  soldiers  do  not  necessarily  feel  any  anger  at 
other  soldiers  who  are  trying  to  shoot  them  to  death. 
That  is  thought  of  as  within  the  rules  of  the  game. 
As  Admiral  Cervera's  chief  of  staff  is  reported  to  have 
said  to  Admiral  Sampson,  "You  know  there  is  noth- 
ing personal  in  this."  But  if  the  white  flag  is  used 
treacherously,  explosive  bullets  employed,  or  the  moral 
standard  otherwise  transgressed,  there  is  hard  feeling. 
It  is  very  much  the  same  with  the  multiform  conflicts 
of  purpose  in  modern  industrial  life.  It  is  not  clear 
that  competition  as  such,  apart  from  the  question  of 
fairness  or  unfairness,  has  any  tendency  to  increase 
hostility.  Competition  and  the  clash  of  purposes  are 
inseparable  from  activity,  and  are  felt  to  be  so.  Ill- 
feeling  flourishes  no  more  in  an  active,  stirring  state 
of  society  than  in  a  stagnant  state.  The  trouble  with 
our  industrial  relations  is  not  the  mere  extent  of  com- 
petition, but  the  partial  lack  of  established  laws,  rules, 
and  customs,  to  determine  what  is  right  and  fair  in  it. 
This  partical  lack  of  standards  is  connected  with  the 
rapid  changes  in  industry  and  industrial  relations 
among  men,  with  which  the  development  of  law  and  of 
moral  criteria  has  by  no  means  kept  pace.  Hence 
there  arises  great  uncertainty  as  to  what  some  persons 
and  classes  may  rightly  and  fairly  require  of  other 
persons  and  classes;  and  this  uncertainty  lets  loose 
angry  imaginations. 

288 


HOSTILITY 

It  will  be  evident  that  I  do  not  look  upon  affec- 
tion, or  anger,  or  any  other  particular  mode  of  feeling, 
as  in  itself  good  or  bad,  social  or  antisocial,  progres- 
sive or  retrogressive.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  essen- 
tially good,  social,  or  progressive  thing,  in  this  regard, 
is  the  organization  and  discipline  of  all  emotions  by 
the  aid  of  reason,  in  harmony  with  a  developing  gen- 
eral life,  which  is  summed  up  for  us  in  conscience. 
That  this  development  of  the  general  life  is  such  as  to 
tend  ultimately  to  do  away  with  hostile  feeling  alto- 
gether, is  not  clear.  The  actively  good  people,  the 
just  men,  reformers,  and  prophets,  not  excepting  him 
who  drove  the  money-changers  from  the  Temple, 
have  been  and  are,  for  the  most  part,  people  who 
feel  the  spur  of  resentment;  and  it  is  not  evident  that 
this  can  cease  to  be  the  case.  The  diversity  of  human 
minds  and  endeavors  seems  to  be  an  essential  part 
of  the  general  plan  of  things,  and  shows  no  tendency 
to  diminish.  This  diversity  involves  a  conflict  of 
ideas  and  purposes,  which,  in  those  who  take  it  ear- 
nestly, is  likely  to  occasion  hostile  feeling.  This  feel- 
ing should  become  less  wayward,  violent,  bitter,  or 
personal,  in  a  narrow  sense,  and  more  disciplined, 
rational,  discriminating,  and  quietly  persistent.  That 
it  ought  to  disappear  is  certainly  not  apparent. 

Something  similar  to  what  has  been  said  of  anger 
will  hold  true  of  any  well-marked  type  of  instinctive 
emotion.  If  we  take  fear,  for  instance,  and  try  to 
recall  our  experience  of  it  from  early  childhood  on, 
it  seems   clear   that,   while   the   emotion   itself  may 

289 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

change  but  little,  the  ideas,  occasions,  suggestions 
that  excite  it  depend  upon  the  state  of  our  intellectual 
and  social  development,  and  so  undergo  great  alter- 
ation. The  feeling  does  not  tend  to  disappear,  but 
to  become  less  violent  and  spasmodic,  more  and  more 
social  as  regards  the  objects  that  excite  it,  and  more 
and  more  subject,  in  the  best  minds,  to  the  discipline 
of  reason. 

The  fears  of  little  children*  are  largely  excited  by- 
immediate  sensible  experiences — darkness,  solitude, 
sharp  noises,  and  so  on.  Sensitive  persons  often  re- 
main throughout  life  subject  to  irrational  fears  of 
this  sort,  and  it  is  well  known  that  they  play  a  con- 
spicuous part  in  hysteria,  insanity,  and  other  weak  or 
morbid  conditions.  But  for  the  most  part  the  healthy 
adult  mind  becomes  accustomed  and  indifferent  to 
these  simple  phenomena,  and  transfers  its  emotional 
sensibility  to  more  complex  interests.  These  interests 
are  for  the  most  part  sympathetic,  involving  our 
social  rather  than  our  material  self — our  standing  in 
the  minds  of  other  people,  the  well-being  of  those  we 
care  for,  and  so  on.  Yet  these  fears — fear  of  stand- 
ing alone,  of  losing  one's  place  in  the  flow  of  human 
action  and  sympathy,  fear  for  the  character  and  suc- 
cess of  those  near  to  us— have  often  the  very  quality 
of  childish  fear.  A  man  cast  out  of  his  regular  occu- 
pation and  secure  place  in  the  system  of  the  world 
feels  a  terror  like  that  of  the  child  in  the  dark;  just  as 
impulsive,   perhaps  just  as  purposeless  and  paralyz- 

*  Compare  G.  Stanley  Hall's  study  of  Fear  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  vol.  8,  p.  147. 

290 


HOSTILITY 

ing.  The  main  difference  seems  to  be  that  the  latter 
fear  is  stimulated  by  a  complex  idea,  implying  a  so- 
cially imaginative  habit  of  mind. 

Social  fear,  of  a  sort  perhaps  somewhat  morbid,  is 
vividly  depicted  by  Rousseau  in  the  passage  of  his 
Confessions  where  he  describes  the  feeling  that  led 
him  falsely  to  accuse  a  maid-servant  of  a  theft  which 
he  had  himself  committed.  "When  she  appeared  my 
heart  was  agonized,  but  the  presence  of  so  many  peo- 
ple was  more  powerful  than  my  compunction.  I  did 
not  fear  punishment,  but  I  dreaded  shame:  I  dreaded 
it  more  than  death,  more  than  the  crime,  more  than 
all  the  world.  I  would  have  buried,  hid  myself  in 
the  centre  of  the  earth:  invincible  shame  bore  down 
every  other  sentiment;  shame  alone  caused  all  my  im- 
pudence, and  in  proportion  as  I  became  criminal 
the  fear  of  discovery  rendered  me  intrepid.  I  felt 
no  dread  but  that  of  being  detected,  of  being  publicly 
and  to  my  face  declared  a  thief,  liar,  and  calumnia- 
tor. ..."  * 

So  also  we  might  distinguish,  as  in  the  case  of  anger, 
a  higher  form  of  social  fear,  one  that  is  not  narrowly 
personal,  but  relates  to  some  socially  derived  ideal  of 
good  or  right.  For  instance,  in  a  soldier  the  terror 
of  roaring  guns  and  singing  bullets  would  be  a  fear  of 
the  lowest  or  animal  type.     Dread  of  the  disgrace  to 

*  The  terrors  of  our  dreams  are  caused  largely  by  social  imagi- 
nations. Thus  Stevenson,  in  one  of  his  letters,  speaks  of  "my 
usual  dreams  of  social  miseries  and  misunderstandings  and  all 
sorts  of  crucifixions  of  the  spirit." — Letters  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson,  i,  p.  79.  Many  of  us  know  that  dream  of  being  in 
some  public  place  without  decent  clothing. 

291 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

follow  running  away  would  be  a  social  fear,  yet  not 
of  the  highest  sort,  because  the  thing  dreaded  is  not 
wrong  but  shame — a  comparatively  simple  and  non- 
rational  idea.  People  often  do  what  they  know  is 
wrong  under  the  influence  of  such  fear,  as  did  Rous- 
seau in  the  incident  quoted  above.  But,  supposing 
the  soldier's  highest  ideal  to  be  the  success  of  his  army 
and  his  country,  a  fear  for  that,  overcoming  all  lower 
and  cruder  fears — selfish  fears  as  they  would  ordi- 
narily be  called — would  be  moral  or  ethical. 


292 


CHAPTER  VIII 
EMULATION 

CONFORMITY — NON-CONFORMITY — THE  TWO  VIEWED  A3  COMPLE- 
MENTARY PHASES  OF  LIFE — RIVALRY — 'RIVALRY  IN  SOCIAL  SER- 
VICE— CONDITIONS  UNDER  WHICH  EMULATION  IN  SERVICE  MAY 
PREVAIL — HERO-WORSHIP 

It  will  be  convenient  to  distinguish  three  sorts  of 
emulation — conformity,  rivalry,  and  hero-worship. 

Conformity  may  be  denned  as  the  endeavor  to 
maintain  a  standard  set  by  a  group.  It  is  a  volun- 
tary imitation  of  prevalent  modes  of  action,  distin- 
guished from  rivalry  and  other  aggressive  phases  of 
emulation  by  being  comparatively  passive,  aiming  to 
keep  up  rather  than  to  excel,  and  concerning  itself 
for  the  most  part  with  what  is  outward  and  formal. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  distinguished  from  involun- 
tary imitation  by  being  intentional  instead  of  me- 
chanical. Thus  it  is  not  conformity,  for  most  of  us, 
to  speak  the  English  language,  because  we  have  prac- 
tically no  choice  in  the  matter,  but  we  might  choose 
to  conform  to  particular  pronunciations  or  turns  of 
speech  used  by  those  with  whom  we  wish  to  associate. 

The  ordinary  motive  to  conformity  is  a  sense,  more 
or  less  vivid,  of  the  pains  and  inconveniences  of  non- 
conformity. Most  people  find  it  painful  to  go  to  an 
evening  company  in  any  other  than  the  customary 
dress;  the  source  of  the  pain  appearing  to  be  a  vague 
sense  of  the  depreciatory  curiosity  which  one  imagines 

293 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  he  will  excite.  His  social  self-feeling  is  hurt  by 
an  unfavorable  view  of  himself  that  he  attributes  to 
others.  This  example  is  typical  of  the  way  the  group 
coerces  each  of  its  members  in  all  matters  concerning 
which  he  has  no  strong  and  definite  private  purpose. 
The  world  constrains  us  without  any  definite  inten- 
tion to  do  so,  merely  through  the  impulse,  common  to 
all,  to  despise  peculiarity  for  which  no  reason  is  per- 
ceived. "Nothing  in  the  world  more  subtle,"  says 
George  Eliot,  speaking  of  the  decay  of  higher  aims  in 
certain  people,  "than  the  process  of  their  gradual 
change !  In  the  beginning  they  inhaled  it  unknow- 
ingly; you  and  I  may  have  sent  some  of  our  breath 
toward  infecting  them,  when  we  uttered  our  conform- 
ing falsities  or  drew  our  silly  conclusions:  or  perhaps 
it  came  with  the  vibrations  from  a  woman's  glance." 
"Solitude  is  fearsome  and  heavy-hearted,"  and  non- 
conformity condemns  us  to  it  by  causing  gene,  if  not 
dislike,  in  others,  and  so  interrupting  that  relaxation 
and  spontaneity  of  attitude  that  is  required  for  the 
easy  flow  of  sympathy  and  communication.  Thus  it 
is  hard  to  be  at  ease  with  one  who  is  conspicuously 
worse  or  better  dressed  than  we  are,  or  whose  man- 
ners are  notably  different;  no  matter  how  little  store 
our  philosophy  may  set  by  such  things.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  likeness  in  small  things  that  enables  them  to 
be  forgotten  gives  people  a  prima  facie  at-homeness 
with  each  other  highly  favorable  to  sympathy;  and 
so  we  all  wish  to  have  it  with  people  we  care  for. 

It  would  seem  that  the  repression  of  non-conformity 
is  a  native  impulse,  and  that  tolerance  always  requires 

294 


EMULATION 

some  moral  exertion.  We  all  cherish  our  habitual 
system  of  thought,  and  anything  that  breaks  in  upon 
it  in  a  seemingly  wanton  manner,  is  annoying  to  us 
and  likely  to  cause  resentment.  So  our  first  tendency 
is  to  suppress  the  peculiar,  and  we  learn  to  endure  it 
it  only  when  we  must,  either  because  it  is  shown  to 
be  reasonable  or  because  it  proves  refractory  to  our 
opposition.  The  innovator  is  nearly  as  apt  as  any  one 
else  to  put  down  innovation  in  others.  Words  denot- 
ing singularity  usually  carry  some  reproach  with 
them;  and  it  would  perhaps  be  found  that  the  more 
settled  the  social  system  is,  the  severer  is  the  implied 
condemnation.  In  periods  of  disorganization  and 
change,  such  as  ours  is  in  many  respects,  people  are 
educated  to  comparative  tolerance  by  unavoidable 
familiarity  with  conflicting  views — as  religious  toler- 
ation, for  instance,  is  the  outcome  of  the  continued 
spectacle  of  competing  creeds. 

Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  discussing  the  forces  that  con- 
trolled the  legal  decisions  of  a  Roman  praetor,  remarks 
that  he  "was  kept  within  the  narrowest  bounds  by 
the  prepossessions  imbibed  from  early  training  and 
by  the  strong  restraints  of  professional  opinion,  re- 
straints of  which  the  stringency  can  only  be  appre- 
ciated by  those  who  have  personally  experienced 
them."  *  In  the  same  way  every  profession,  trade,  or 
handicraft,  every  church,  circle,  fraternity,  or  clique, 
has  its  more  or  less  definite  standards,  conformity  to 
which  it  tends  to  impose  on  all  its  members.  It  is 
not  at  all  essential  that  there  should  be  any  deliberate 
*  Maine,  Ancient  Law,  p.  62. 
295 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

purpose  to  set  up  these  standards,  or  any  special  ma- 
chinery for  enforcing  them.  They  spring  up  spon- 
taneously, as  it  were,  by  an  unconscious  process  of 
assimilation,  and  are  enforced  by  the  mere  inertia  of 
the  minds  constituting  the  group. 

Thus  every  variant  idea  of  conduct  has  to  fight  its 
way:  as  soon  as  any  one  attempts  to  do  anything  un- 
expected the  world  begins  to  cry,  "Get  in  the  rut! 
Get  in  the  rut!  Get  in  the  rut!"  and  shoves,  stares, 
coaxes,  and  sneers  until  he  does  so — or  until  he  makes 
good  his  position,  and  so,  by  altering  the  standard 
in  a  measure,  establishes  a  new  basis  of  conformity. 
There  are  no  people  who  are  altogether  non-conform- 
ers,  or  who  are  completely  tolerant  of  non-conformity 
in  others.  Mr.  Lowell,  who  wrote  some  of  the  most 
stirring  lines  in  literature  in  defense  of  non-conformity, 
was  himself  conventional  and  an  upholder  of  conven- 
tions in  letters  and  social  intercourse.  Either  to  be 
exceptional  or  to  appreciate  the  exceptional  requires  a 
considerable  expenditure  of  energy,  and  no  one  can 
afford  this  in  many  directions.  There  are  many  per- 
sons who  take  pains  to  keep  their  minds  open;  and 
there  are  groups,  countries,  and  periods  which  are 
comparatively  favorable  to  open-mindedness  and 
variation;  but  conformity  is  always  the  rule  and  non- 
conformity the  exception. 

Conformity  is  a  sort  of  co-operation :  one  of  its  func- 
tions is  to  economize  energy.  The  standards  which 
it  presses  upon  the  individual  are  often  elaborate  and 
valuable  products  of  cumulative  thought  and  ex- 
perience, and  whatever  imperfections  they  may  have 

296 


EMULATION 

they  are,  as  a  whole,  an  indispensable  foundation 
for  life:  it  is  inconceivable  that  any  one  should  dis- 
pense with  them.  If  I  imitate  the  dress,  the  manners, 
the  household  arrangements  of  other  people,  I  save 
so  much  mental  energy  for  other  purposes.  It  is  best 
that  each  should  originate  where  he  is  specially  fitted 
to  do  so,  and  follow  others  where  they  are  better 
qualified  to  lead.  It  is  said  with  truth  that  con- 
formity is  a  drag  upon  genius;  but  it  is  equally  true 
and  important  that  its  general  action  upon  human 
nature  is  elevating.  We  get  by  it  the  selected  and 
systematized  outcome  of  the  past,  and  to  be  brought 
up  to  its  standards  is  a  brief  recapitulation  of  social 
development:  it  sometimes  levels  down  but  more 
generally  levels  up.  It  may  be  well  for  purposes  of 
incitement  to  goad  our  individuality  by  the  abuse  of 
conformity;  but  statements  made  with  this  in  view 
lack  accuracy.  It  is  good  for  the  young  and  aspiring 
to  read  Emerson's  praise  of  self-reliance,  in  order 
that  they  may  have  courage  to  fight  for  their  ideas; 
but  we  may  also  sympathize  with  Goethe  when  he 
says  that  "nothing  more  exposes  us  to  madness  than 
distinguishing  us  from  others,  and  nothing  more  con- 
tributes to  maintaining  our  common  sense  than  living 
in  the  universal  way  with  multitudes  of  men."  * 

There  are  two  aspects  of  non-conformity:  first,  a 
rebellious  impulse  or  "contrary  suggestion"  leading 
to  an  avoidance  of  accepted  standards  in  a  spirit  of 
opposition,  without  necessary  reference  to  any  other 

*  Wilhelm  Meister's  Apprenticeship,  v,  16,  Carlyle's  Transla- 
tion. 

297 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

standards;  and,  second,  an  appeal  from  present  and 
commonplace  standards  to  those  that  are  compara- 
tively remote  and  unusual.  These  two  usually  work 
together.  One  is  led  to  a  mode  of  life  different  from 
that  of  the  people  about  him,  partly  by  intrinsic  con- 
trariness, and  partly  by  fixing  his  imagination  on  the 
ideas  and  practices  of  other  people  whose  mode  of 
life  he  finds  more  congenial. 

But  the  essence  of  non-conformity  as  a  personal 
attitude  consists  in  contrary  suggestion  or  the  spirit 
of  opposition.  People  of  natural  energy  take  pleasure 
in  that  enhanced  feeling  of  self  that  comes  from  con- 
sciously not  doing  that  which  is  suggested  or  enjoined 
upon  them  by  circumstances  and  by  other  persons. 
There  is  joy  in  the  sense  of  self-assertion:  it  is  sweet  to 
do  one's  own  things;  and  if  others  are  against  him  one 
feels  sure  they  are  his  own.  To  brave  the  disapproval 
of  men  is  tonic;  it  is  like  climbing  along  a  mountain 
path  in  the  teeth  of  the  wind;  one  feels  himself  as  a 
cause,  and  knows  the  distinctive  efficacy  of  his  being. 
Thus  self-feeling,  which,  if  somewhat  languid  and  on 
the  defensive,  causes  us  to  avoid  peculiarity,  may, 
when  in  a  more  energetic  condition,  cause  us  to  seek 
it;  just  as  we  rejoice  at  one  time  to  brave  the  cold, 
and  at  another  to  cower  over  the  fire,  according  to 
the  vigor  of  our  circulation. 

This  may  easily  be  observed  in  vigorous  children: 
each  in  his  way  will  be  found  to  attach  himself  to 
methods  of  doing  things  which  he  regards  as  peculiarly 
his  own,  and  to  delight  in  asserting  these  methods 
against  opposition.     It  is  also  the  basis  of  some  of  the 

298 


EMULATION 

deepest  and  most  significant  differences  between  races 
and  individuals.  Controlled  by  intellect  and  purpose 
this  passion  for  differentiation  becomes  self-reliance, 
self-discipline,  and  immutable  persistence  in  a  private 
aim:  qualities  which  more  than  any  others  make  the 
greater  power  of  superior  persons  and  races.  It  is  a 
source  of  enterprise,  exploration,  and  endurance  in 
all  kinds  of  undertakings,  and  of  fierce  defense  of  pri- 
vate rights.  How  much  of  Anglo-Saxon  history  is 
rooted  in  the  intrinsic  cantankerousness  of  the  race ! 
It  is  largely  this  that  makes  the  world-winning  pioneer, 
who  keeps  pushing  on  because  he  wants  a  place  all 
to  himself,  and  hates  to  be  bothered  by  other  people 
over  whom  he  has  no  control.  On  the  frontier  a 
common  man  defines  himself  better  as  a  cause.  He 
looks  round  at  his  clearing,  his  cabin,  his  growing 
crops,  his  wife,  his  children,  his  dogs,  horses,  and 
cattle,  and  says,  I  did  it :  they  are  mine.  All  that  he 
sees  recalls  the  glorious  sense  of  things  won  by  his 
own  hand. 

Who  does  not  feel  that  it  is  a  noble  thing  to  stand 
alone,  to  steer  due  west  into  an  unknown  universe, 
like  Columbus,  or,  like  Nansen,  ground  the  ship  upon 
the  ice-pack  and  drift  for  the  North  Pole?  "Adhere 
to  your  own  act,"  says  Emerson,  "and  congratulate 
yourself  if  you  have  done  something  strange  and 
extravagant,  and  broken  the  monotony  of  a  decorous 
age."  We  like  that  epigram,  Victrix  causa  diis  placuit, 
sed  victa  Catoni,  because  we  like  the  thought  that  a 
man  stood  out  alone  against  the  gods  themselves, 
and  set  his  back  against  the  course  of  nature.     The 

299 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"souls  that  stood  alone, 
While  the  men  they  agonized  for  hurled  the  contumelious 
stone," 

are  not  to  be  thought  of  as  victims  of  self-sacrifice. 
Many  of  them  rejoiced  in  just  that  isolation,  and  dar- 
ing, and  persistence;  so  that  it  was  not  self-sacrifice 
but  self-realization.  Conflict  is  a  necessity  of  the  ac- 
tive soul,  and  if  a  social  order  could  be  created  from 
which  it  were  absent,  that  order  would  perish  as  un- 
congenial to  human  nature.  "To  be  a  man  is  to  be 
a  non-conformer." 

I  think  that  people  go  into  all  sorts  of  enterprises, 
for  instance  into  novel  and  unaccredited  sorts  of  phi- 
lanthropy, with  a  spirit  of  adventure  not  far  removed 
from  the  spirit  that  seeks  the  North  Pole.  It  is  neither 
true  nor  wholesome  to  think  of  the  "good"  as  ac- 
tuated by  motives  radically  different  in  kind  from 
those  of  ordinary  human  nature;  and  I  imagine  the 
best  of  them  are  far  from  wishing  to  be  thus  thought 
of.  Undertakings  of  reform  and  philanthropy  appeal 
to  the  mind  in  a  double  aspect.  There  is,  of  course, 
the  desire  to  accomplish  some  worthy  end,  to  effectu- 
ate some  cherished  sentiment  which  the  world  ap- 
pears to  ignore,  to  benefit  the  oppressed,  to  advance 
human  knowledge,  or  the  like.  But  behind  that  is 
the  vague  need  of  self-expression,  of  creation,  of  a 
momentous  experience,  so  that  one  may  know  that 
one  has  really  lived.  And  the  finer  imaginations  are 
likely  to  find  this  career  of  novelty  and  daring,  not  in 
the  somewhat  outworn  paths  of  war  and  exploration, 
but  in  new  and  precarious  kinds  of  social  activity. 

300 


EMULATION 

So  one  may  sometimes  meet  in  social  settlements  and 
charity-organization  bureaus  the  very  sort  of  people 
that  led  the  Crusades  into  Palestine.  I  do  not  speak 
at  random,  but  have  several  persons  in  mind  who 
seem  to  me  to  be  of  this  sort. 

In  its  second  aspect  non-conformity  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  remoter  conformity.  The  rebellion  against 
social  influence  is  only  partial  and  apparent;  and  the 
one  who  seems  to  be  out  of  step  with  the  procession 
is  really  keeping  time  to  another  music.  As  Thoreau 
said,  he  hears  a  different  drummer.  If  a  boy  refuses 
the  occupation  his  parents  and  friends  think  best 
for  him,  and  persists  in  working  at  something  strange 
and  fantastic,  like  art  or  science,  it  is  sure  to  be  the 
case  that  his  most  vivid  life  is  not  with  those  about 
him  at  all,  but  with  the  masters  he  has  known  through 
books,  or  perhaps  seen  and  heard  for  a  few  moments. 
Environment,  in  the  sense  of  social  influence  actually 
at  work,  is  far  from  the  definite  and  obvious  thing  it 
is  often  assumed  to  be.  Our  real  environment  con- 
sists of  those  images  which  are  most  present  to  our 
thoughts,  and  in  the  case  of  a  vigorous,  growing  mind, 
these  are  likely  to  be  something  quite  different  from 
what  is  most  present  to  the  senses.  The  group  to 
which  we  give  allegiance,  and  to  whose  standards  we 
try  to  conform,  is  determined  by  our  own  selective 
affinity,  choosing  among  all  the  personal  influences 
accessible  to  us;  and  so  far  as  we  select  with  any  inde- 
pendence of  our  palpable  companions,  we  have  the 
appearance  of  non-conformity. 

All  non-conformity  that  is  affirmative  or  construc- 
301 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tive  must  act  by  this  selection  of  remoter  relations; 
opposition,  by  itself,  being  sterile,  and  meaning  noth- 
ing beyond  personal  peculiarity.  There  is,  therefore, 
no  definite  line  between  conformity  and  non-conform- 
ity; there  is  simply  a  more  or  less  characteristic  and 
unusual  way  of  selecting  and  combining  accessible  in- 
fluences. It  is  much  the  same  question  as  that  of 
invention  versus  imitation.  As  Professor  Baldwin 
points  out,  there  is  no  radical  separation  between  these 
two  aspects  of  human  thought  and  action.  There  is 
no  imitation  that  is  absolutely  mechanical  and  unin- 
ventive — -a  man  cannot  repeat  an  act  without  putting 
something  of  his  idiosyncrasy  into  it — neither  is  there 
any  invention  that  is  not  imitative  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  made  up  of  elements  suggested  by  observation 
and  experience.  What  the  mind  does,  in  any  case,  is 
to  reorganize  and  reproduce  the  suggested  materials 
in  accordance  with  its  own  structure  and  tendency;  and 
we  judge  the  result  as  imitative  or  inventive,  original 
or  commonplace,  according  as  it  does  or  does  not  strike 
us  as  a  new  and  fruitful  employment  of  the  common 

material.* 

A  just  view  of  the  matter  should  embrace  the  whole 
of  it  at  once,  and  see  conformity  and  non-conformity 

*  In  reading  studies  of  a  particular  aspect  of  life,  like  M. 
Tarde's  brilliant  work,  Lea  Lois  de  limitation,  it  is  well  to  re- 
member that  there  are  many  such  aspects,  any  of  which,  if 
expounded  at  length  and  in  an  interesting  manner,  might  ap- 
pear for  the  time  to  be  of  more  importance  than  any  other.  I 
think  that  other  phases  of  social  activity,  such,  for  instance,  as 
communication,  competition,  differentiation,  adaptation,  ideali- 
zation, have  as  good  claims  as  imitation  to  be  regarded  as  the 
social  process,  and  that  a  book  similar  in  character  to  M.  Tarde's 
might,  perhaps,  be  written  upon  any  one  of  them.  The  truth 
is  that  the  real  process  is  a  multiform  thing  of  which  these  are 

302 


EMULATION 

as  normal  and  complementary  phases  of  human  ac- 
tivity. In  their  quieter  moods  men  have  a  pleasure 
in  social  agreement  and  the  easy  flow  of  sympathy, 
which  makes  non-conformity  uncomfortable.  But 
when  their  energy  is  full  and  demanding  an  outlet 
through  the  instincts,  it  can  only  be  appeased  by 
something  which  gives  the  feeling  of  self-assertion. 
They  are  agitated  by  a  "creative  impatience,"  an  out- 
burst of  the  primal  need  to  act;  like  the  Norsemen,  of 
whom  Gibbon  says:  "Impatient  of  a  bleak  climate 
and  narrow  limits,  they  started  from  the  banquet, 
sounded  their  horn,  ascended  their  vessels,  and  ex- 
plored every  coast  that  promised  either  spoil  or  settle- 
ment." *  In  social  intercourse  this  active  spirit  finds 
its  expression  largely  in  resisting  the  will  of  others; 
and  the  spirit  of  opposition  and  self-differentiation 
thus  arising  is  the  principal  direct  stimulus  to  non- 
conformity. This  spirit,  however,  has  no  power  of 
absolute  creation,  and  is  forced  to  seek  for  sugges- 
tions and  materials  in  the  minds  of  others;  so  that  the 
independence  is  only  relative  to  the  more  immediate 
and  obvious  environment,  and  never  constitutes  a 
real  revolt  from  the  social  order. 

glimpses.  They  are  good  so  long  as  we  recognize  that  they 
are  glimpses  and  use  them  to  help  out  our  perception  of  that 
many-sided  whole  which  life  is;  but  if  they  become  doctrines 
they  are  objectionable. 

The  Struggle  for  Existence  is  another  of  these  glimpses  of  life 
which  just  now  seems  to  many  the  dominating  fact  of  the  uni- 
verse, chiefly  because  attention  has  been  fixed  upon  it  by  copious 
and  interesting  exposition.  As  it  has  had  many  predecessors 
in  this  place  of  importance,  so  doubtless  it  will  have  many  suc- 
cessors. 

*  Decline  and  Fall,  vol.  vii,  p.  82;  Milman-Smith  edition. 
303 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Naturally  non-conformity  is  characteristic  of  the 
more  energetic  states  of  the  human  mind.  Men  of 
great  vigor  are  sure  to  be  non-conformers  in  some  im- 
portant respect;  youth  glories  in  non-conformity, 
while  age  usually  comes  back  to  the  general  point  of 
view.  "Men  are  conservatives  when  they  are  least 
vigorous,  or  when  they  are  most  luxurious.  They 
are  conservatives  after  dinner,  or  before  taking  their 
rest;  when  they  are  sick  or  aged.  In  the  morning,  or 
when  their  intellect  or  their  conscience  has  been 
aroused,  when  they  hear  music,  or  when  they  read 
poetry,  they  are  radicals."  * 

The  rational  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  the 
question  of  conformity  or  non-conformity  in  his  own 
life,  would  seem  to  be:  assert  your  individuality  in 
matters  which  you  deem  important;  conform  in  those 
you  deem  unimportant.  To  have  a  conspicuously 
individual  way  of  doing  everything  is  impossible  to  a 
sane  person,  and  to  attempt  it  would  be  to  do  one's 
self  a  gratuitous  injury,  by  closing  the  channels  of 
sympathy  through  which  we  partake  of  the  life  around 
us.  We  should  save  our  strength  for  matters  in  re- 
gard to  which  persistent  conviction  impels  us  to  in- 
sist upon  our  own  way. 

Society,  like  every  living,  advancing  whole,  requires 
a  just  union  of  stability  and  change,  uniformity,  and 
differentiation.  Conformity  is  the  phase  of  stability 
and  uniformity,  while  non-conformity  is  the  phase  of 
differentiation  and  change.  The  latter  cannot  intro- 
duce anything  wholly  new,  but  it  can  and  does  effect 

*  Emerson,  address  on  New  England  Reformers. 
304 


EMULATION 

such   a  reorganization  of   existing   material   as   con- 
stantly to  transform  and  renew  human  life. 

I  mean  by  rivalry  a  competitive  striving  urged  on 
by  the  desire  to  win.  It  resembles  conformity  in 
that  the  impelling  idea  is  usually  a  sense  of  what 
other  people  are  doing  and  thinking,  and  especially 
of  what  they  are  thinking  of  us:  it  differs  from  it 
chiefly  in  being  more  aggressive.  Conformity  aims 
to  keep  up  with  the  procession,  rivalry  to  get  ahead 
of  it.  The  former  is  moved  by  a  sense  of  the  pains 
and  inconveniences  of  differing  from  other  people, 
the  latter  by  an  eagerness  to  compel  their  admira- 
tion. Winning,  to  the  social  self,  usually  means 
conspicuous  success  in  making  some  desired  impres- 
sion upon  other  minds,  as  in  becoming  distinguished 
for  power,  wealth,  skill,  culture,  beneficence,  or  the 
like. 

On  the  other  hand,  rivalry  may  be  distinguished 
from  finer  sorts  of  emulation  by  being  more  simple, 
crude,  and  direct.  It  implies  no  very  subtle  mental 
activity,  no  elaborate  or  refined  ideal.  If  a  spirited 
horse  hears  another  overtaking  him  from  behind,  he 
pricks  up  his  ears,  quickens  his  steps,  and  does  his 
best  to  keep  ahead.  And  human  rivalry  appears  to 
have  much  of  this  instinctive  element  in  it;  to  be- 
come aware  of  life  and  striving  going  on  about  us 
seems  to  act  immediately  upon  the  nerves,  quicken- 
ing an  impulse  to  live  and  strive  in  like  manner.  An 
eager  person  will  not  hear  or  read  of  vivid  action  of 
any  sort  without  feeling  some  impulse  to  get  into  it; 

305 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

just  as  he  cannot  mingle  in  a  hurrying,  excited  crowd 
without  sharing  in  the  excitement  and  hurry,  whether 
he  knows  what  it  is  all  about  or  not.  The  genesis 
of  ambition  is  often  something  as  follows:  one  min- 
gles with  men,  his  self-feeling  is  vaguely  aroused,  and 
he  wishes  to  be  something  to  them.  He  sees,  perhaps, 
that  he  cannot  excel  in  just  what  they  are  doing, 
and  so  he  takes  refuge  in  his  imagination,  thinking 
what  he  can  do  which  is  admirable,  and  determining 
to  do  it.     Thus  he  goes  home  nursing  secret  ambitions. 

The  motive  of  rivalry,  then,  is  a  strong  sense  that 
there  is  a  race  going  on,  and  an  impulsive  eagerness 
to  be  in  it.  It  is  rather  imitative  than  inventive; 
the  idea  being  not  so  much  to  achieve  an  object  for 
its  own  sake,  because  it  is  reflectively  judged  to  be 
worthy,  as  to  get  what  the  rest  are  after.  There  is 
conformity  in  ideals  combined  with  a  thirst  for  per- 
sonal distinction.  It  has  little  tendency  toward  in- 
novation, notwithstanding  the  element  of  antagonism 
in  it;  but  takes  its  color  and  character  from  the  preva- 
lent social  life,  accepting  and  pursuing  the  existing 
ideal  of  success,  and  whatever  special  quality  it  has 
depends  upon  the  quality  of  that  ideal.  There  is, 
for  instance,  nothing  so  gross  or  painful  that  it  may  not 
become  an  object  of  pursuit  through  emulation. 
Charles  Booth,  who  has  studied  so  minutely  the  slums 
of  London,  says  that  "among  the  poor,  men  drink  on 
and  on  from  a  perverted  pride,"  and  among  another 
class  a  similar  sentiment  leads  women  to  inflict  sur- 
prising deformities  of  the  trunk  upon  themselves. 

Professor  William  James  suggests  that  rivalry  does 
306 


EMULATION 

nine-tenths  of  the  world's  work.*  Certainly  no  mo- 
tive is  so  generally  powerful  among  active,  efficient 
men  of  the  ordinary  type,  the  type  that  keeps  the  ball 
moving  all  over  the  world.  Intellectual  initiative, 
high  and  persistent  idealism,  are  rare.  The  great 
majority  of  able  men  are  ambitious,  without  having 
intrinsic  traits  that  definitely  direct  their  ambition 
to  any  particular  object.  They  feel  their  way  about 
among  the  careers  which  their  time,  their  country, 
their  early  surroundings  and  training,  make  accessi- 
ble to  them,  and,  selecting  the  one  which  seems  to 
promise  the  best  chance  of  success,  they  throw  them- 
selves into  the  pursuit  of  the  things  that  conduce  to 
that  success.  If  the  career  is  law,  they  strive  to  win 
cases  and  gain  wealth  and  prestige,  accepting  the 
moral  code  and  other  standards  that  they  find  in  ac- 
tual use;  and  it  is  the  same,  mutatis  mutandis,  in  com- 
merce, politics,  the  ministry,  the  various  handicrafts, 
and  so  on. 

There  is  thus  nothing  morally  distinctive  about 
rivalry;  it  is  harmful  or  beneficent  according  to  the 
objects  and  standards  with  reference  to  which  it  acts. 
All  depends  upon  the  particular  game  in  which  one 
takes  a  hand.  It  may  be  said  in  a  broad  way,  how- 
ever, that  rivalry  supplies  a  stimulus  wholesome  and 
needful  to  the  great  majority  of  men,  and  that  it  is, 
on  the  whole,  a  chief  progressive  force,  utilizing  the 
tremendous  power  of  ambition,  and  controlling  it  to 
the  furtherance  of  ends  that  are  socially  approved. 
The  great  mass  of  what  we  judge  to  be  evil  is  of  a 
*  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  p.  409. 
307 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

negative  rather  than  a  positive  character,  arising  not 
from  misdirected  ambition  but  from  apathy  or  sen- 
suality, from  a  falling  short  of  that  active,  social  hu- 
manity which  ambition  implies. 

In  order  to  work  effectively  in  the  service  of  soci- 
ety rivalry  must  be  disciplined  and  organized.  This 
means,  chiefly,  that  men  must  associate  in  specialized 
groups,  each  group  pursuing  ideals  of  technical  effi- 
ciency and  social  service,  success  in  this  pursuit  being 
the  object  of  rivalry.  Consider,  for  example,  how 
achievement  in  athletics  is  attained  in  our  colleges. 
In  the  first  place,  there  is  a  general  interest  in  sports 
and  an  admiration  for  success  in  them  which  makes 
it  an  object  of  general  ambition.  Many  candidates 
are  "tried  out"  and  assigned,  according  to  their  prom- 
ise, to  special  squads  for  training,  in  football,  baseball, 
running,  jumping,  and  so  on.  In  each  of  these  little 
groups  rivalry  is  made  intense,  definite,  and  systematic 
by  traditions,  by  standards  of  accomplishment,  by 
regular  training,  and  by  expert  appreciation  and  criti- 
cism. Occasional  public  contests  serve  to  arouse  the 
imagination  and  to  exhibit  achievement.  The  whole 
social  self  is  thus  called  in  to  animate  a  course  of 
endeavor  scientifically  directed  to  a  specific  end.  A 
similar  method  is  used  in  armies  and  navies  to  develop 
excellence  in  marksmanship  and  the  like.  And  is  it 
not  much  the  same  in  professional  groups;  among 
lawyers,  for  example,  dentists,  bacteriologists,  astron- 
omers, historians,  painters,  novelists,  and  even  poets? 
In  each  of  these  fields  there  is  a  selected  group  of  can- 

308 


EMULATION 

didates  for  distinction,  watching  one  another's  work, 
eager  to  excel,  imagining  the  judgment  of  their  fel- 
lows, testing  achievement  by  expert  criticism  and  by 
comparison  with  high  examples.  There  is  also  a  more 
or  less  systematic  course  of  "training  which  all  must 
go  through,  and  a  tradition  to  which  all  refer. 

The  general  fact  is  that  the  most  effective  way  of 
utilizing  human  energy  is  through  an  organized  ri- 
valry, which  by  specialization  and  social  control  is, 
at  the  same  time,  organized  co-operation. 

An  ideal  social  system,  from  this  point  of  view, 
would  be  one  in  which  the  work  of  individuals  in  each 
occupation,  the  work  of  occupations  in  relation  to 
one  another,  that  of  class  in  relation  to  class  and  of 
nation  in  relation  to  nation,  should  be  motived  by  a 
desire  to  excel,  this  desire  being  controlled  and  sub- 
ordinated by  allegiance  to  common  social  ideals. 

I  have  little  faith  in  any  system  of  motives  which 
does  not  leave  room  for  personal  and  group  ambitions. 
Self-feeling  and  social  feeling  must  be  harmonized  and 
made  to  go  abreast. 

But  is  it  practicable  to  make  emulation  in  service, 
as  distinct  from  selfish  emulation,  the  ruling  motive 
of  mankind?  If  it  is,  and  if  we  can  establish  ideals 
of  service  that  make  for  general  welfare  and  progress, 
the  problem  of  getting  the  best  out  of  human  nature 
would  seem  to  be  in  a  way  to  work  itself  out. 

There  appears  to  be  nothing  to  prevent  the  higher 
emulation  from  becoming  general  if  we  can  provide 
the  right  conditions  for  it.     If  college  boys,  soldiers, 

309 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  many  sorts  of  professional  men  will  put  their  ut- 
most energies  into  the  attainment  of  excellence,  with- 
out pecuniary  reward,  impelled  only  by  loyalty  to  a 
group  ideal  and  the  hope  of  appreciation,  it  is  clear 
that  the  lack  of  this  spirit  in  other  situations  is  due  not 
to  human  nature  but  to  the  kind  of  appeal  that  is 
made  to  it. 

What,  then,  are  the  right  conditions?  Apparently 
they  are,  in  general,  a  group  spirit  and  tradition,  ruled 
by  service  ideals,  in  which  the  individual  may  merge 
himself.  This  will  take  up  the  self  into  its  own  larger 
life:  the  individual  will  conform  to  it  and  his  ambition 
will  be  to  further  its  ideals.  This  is  what  animates 
the  college  athlete,  the  loyal  soldier,  the  man  of  science, 
the  socialist,  and  the  trade-unionist. 

Without  doubt  it  would  animate  the  workman  in  a 
factory,  if  the  organization  had  the  same  unity  of  spirit 
and  ideal  that  are  found  in  the  other  cases  mentioned. 
In  fact,  however,  this  is  rarely  present  in  the  indus- 
trial and  commercial  world.  For  this  there  are  va- 
rious reasons,  among  which  are  the  following: 

1.  The  fact  that  the  traditional  motive  and  ideal  in 
commerce  and  capitalistic  industry  is  not  service  but 
private  gain.  This  is  a  condition  that  idealizes  self- 
ishness and  is  directly  opposed  to  emulation  in  service. 
Unless  the  idea  of  service  can  be  so  enhanced  that  it 
subordinates  the  idea  of  gain,  these  occupations  will 
continue  to  lack  social  spirit  and  higher  efficiency. 
Apparently  we  must  look  for  this  enhancement  to  the 
development  of  service  groups,  embracing  handworkers 
as  well  as  managers,  with  such  power,  responsibility, 

310 


EMULATION 

and  sense  of  honor  as  we  now  see  in  some  of  the  pro- 
fessions. 

2.  The  unstable  character  of  many  commercial  and 
industrial  activities,  making  it  difficult  to  form  contin- 
uing groups  and  traditions.  This  is  a  serious  and 
possibly,  in  some  cases,  a  fatal  obstacle  to  higher  or- 
ganization. 

3.  The  fact  that  our  present  economic  organization 
is  autocratic,  or  oligarchic,  and  that,  consequently,  the 
mass  of  workers  do  not  and  cannot  feel  that  it  is  their 
own  to  such  a  degree  that  their  selves  are  identified 
with  it  and  that  they  owe  it  honor  and  service. 

Some  critics  of  the  present  condition  speak  of  it  as 
"wage-slavery,"  and  if  the  essence  of  slavery  is  being 
compelled  to  do  work  that  is  in  no  sense  yours,  it  is 
true  that  our  industrial  work  is  largely  of  this  kind. 
It  is  done  under  a  sense  of  compulsion,  without  real 
participation,  and  hence  is  servile  in  spirit,  what- 
ever its  form.  "But,"  we  are  told,  "  if  the  workman 
doesn't  like  it,  he  can  quit."  Precisely;  in  other  words, 
the  situation  is  such  that  the  only  way  to  assert  one's 
self,  to  prove  one's  freedom  and  manhood,  is  to  slight 
his  job,  or  to  strike.  The  self  is  not  only  outside  the 
task  but  hostile  to  it.  A  strike  is  a  time  of  glorious 
self-assertion  against  a  hated  domination.  The  mis- 
use of  human  nature  could  hardly  go  further. 

4.  The  prevalence  of  a  narrow  economics,  which 
disregards  human  nature,  and  particularly  the  social 
self.  The  dogma  that  nothing  but  pecuniary  interest 
need  be  considered  in  the  economic  system  fortifies 
and  perpetuates  a  bad  situation. 

311 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Evidently  we  need  to  revise  our  system  of  motives, 
especially  those  relating  to  material  production,  with 
a  view  to  giving  more  encouragement  to  our  higher 
human  nature.  And  this  will  involve  the  building  up 
of  somewhat  democratic  occupation  groups  with  tra- 
ditions, standards,  and  ideals  of  service. 

By  hero-worship  is  here  meant  an  emulation  that 
strives  to  imitate  some  admired  character,  in  a  spirit 
not  of  rivalry  or  opposition,  but  of  loyal  enthusiasm. 
It  is  higher  than  rivalry,  in  the  sense  that  it  involves 
a  superior  grade  of  mental  activity — though,  of  course, 
there  is  no  sharp  line  of  separation  between  them. 
While  the  other  is  a  rather  gross  and  simple  impulse, 
common  to  all  men  and  to  the  higher  animals,  the 
hero-worshipper  is  an  idealist,  imaginative;  the  ob- 
ject that  arouses  his  enthusiasm  and  his  endeavor 
does  so  because  it  bears  a  certain  relation  to  his  aspi- 
rations, to  his  constructive  thought.  Hero-worship 
is  thus  more  selective,  more  significant  of  the  special 
character  and  tendencies  of  the  individual,  in  every 
way  more  highly  organized  than  rivalry. 

It  has  a  great  place  in  all  active,  aspiring  lives, 
especially  in  the  plastic  period  of  youth.  We  feed 
our  characters,  while  they  are  forming,  upon  the 
vision  of  admired  models;  an  ardent  sympathy  dwells 
upon  the  traits  through  which  their  personality  is 
communicated  to  us — facial  expression,  voice,  sig- 
nificant movements,  and  so  on.  In  this  way  those 
tendencies  in  us  that  are  toward  them  are  literally 
fed;   are   stimulated,    organized,   made   habitual   and 

312 


EMULATION 

familiar.  As  already  pointed  out,  sympathy  appears 
to  be  an  act  of  growth;  and  this  is  especially  true  of 
the  sort  of  sympathy  we  call  hero-worship.  All  auto- 
biographies which  deal  with  youth  show  that  the 
early  development  of  character  is  through  a  series  of 
admirations  and  enthusiasms,  which  pass  away,  to  be 
sure,  but  leave  character  the  richer  for  their  existence. 
They  begin  in  the  nursery,  flourish  with  great  vigor 
in  the  school-yard,  attain  a  passionate  intensity  dur- 
ing adolescence,  and  though  they  abate  rapidly  in 
adult  life,  do  not  altogether  cease  until  the  power  of 
growth  is  lost.  All  will  find,  I  imagine,  if  they  recall 
their  own  experience,  that  times  of  mental  progress 
were  times  when  the  mind  found  or  created  heroes  to 
worship,  often  owning  allegiance  to  several  at  the 
same  time,  each  representing  a  particular  need  of 
development.  The  active  tendencies  of  the  school- 
boy lead  to  admiration  of  the  strongest  and  boldest 
of  his  companions;  or  perhaps,  more  imaginative,  he 
fixes  his  thoughts  on  some  famous  fighter  or  explorer; 
later  it  is  possibly  a  hero  of  statesmanship  or  liter- 
ature who  attracts  him.  Whatever  the  tendency,  it 
is  sure  to  have  its  complementary  hero.  Even  science 
often  begins  in  hero-worship.  "This  work,"  says 
Darwin  of  Humboldt's  Personal  Narrative,  "stirred 
up  in  me  a  burning  zeal  to  add  even  the  most  humble 
contribution  to  the  noble  structure  of  Natural  Sci- 
ence." *  We  easily  forget  this  varied  and  impas- 
sioned idealism  of  early  life;  but  "the  thoughts  of 
youth  are  long,  long  thoughts,"  and  it  is  precisely 
*  See  Darwin's  Life  and  Letters,  by  his  son,  vol.  i,  p.  47. 
313 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

then  and  in  this  way  that  the  most  rapid  develop- 
ment of  character  takes  place.  J.  A.  Symonds,  speak- 
ing of  Professor  Jowett's  early  influence  upon  him 
says,  "Obscurely  but  vividly  I  felt  my  soul  grow  by 
his  contact,  as  it  had  never  grown  before";  and  Goethe 
remarks  that  "vicinity  to  the  master,  like  an  element, 
lifts  one  and  bears  him  on." 

If  youth  is  the  period  of  hero-worship,  so  also  is  it 
true  that  hero-worship,  more  than  anything  else,  per- 
haps, gives  one  the  sense  of  youth.  To  admire,  to 
expand  one's  self,  to  forget  the  rut,  to  have  a  sense 
of  newness  and  life  and  hope,  is  to  feel  young  at  any 
time  of  life.  "Whilst  we  converse  with  what  is  above 
us  we  do  not  grow  old  but  grow  young";  and  that  is 
what  hero-worship  means.  To  have  no  heroes  is  to 
have  no  aspiration,  to  live  on  the  momentum  of  the 
past,  to  be  thrown  back  upon  routine,  sensuality,  and 
the  narrow  self. 

As  hero-worship  becomes  more  imaginative,  it 
merges  insensibly  into  that  devotion  to  ideal  persons 
that  is  called  religious.  It  has  often  been  pointed 
out  that  the  feeling  men  have  toward  a  visible  leader 
and  master  like  Lincoln,  Lee,  Napoleon,  or  Garibaldi, 
is  psychologically  much  the  same  thing  as  the  wor- 
ship of  the  ideal  persons  of  religion.  Hero-worship 
is  a  kind  of  religion,  and  religion,  in  so  far  as  it  con- 
ceives persons,  is  a  kind  of  hero-worship.  Both  are 
expressions  of  that  intrinsically  social  or  communi- 
cative nature  of  human  thought  and  sentiment  which 
was  insisted  upon  in  a  previous  chapter.  That  the 
personality   toward   which   the  feeling  is  directed   is 

314 


EMULATION 

ideal  evidently  affords  no  fundamental  distinction. 
All  persons  are  ideal,  in  a  true  sense,  and  those  whom 
we  admire  and  reverence  are  peculiarly  so.  That  is 
to  say,  the  idea  of  a  person,  whether  his  body  be  pres- 
ent to  our  senses  or  not,  is  imaginative,  a  synthesis, 
an  interpretation  of  many  elements,  resting  upon  our 
whole  experience  of  human  life,  not  merely  upon  our 
acquaintance  with  this  particular  person;  and  the 
more  our  admiration  and  reverence  are  awakened  the 
more  actively  ideal  and  imaginative  does  our  concep- 
tion of  the  person  become.  Of  course  we  never  see 
a  person;  we  see  a  few  visible  traits  which  stimulate 
our  imaginations  to  the  construction  of  a  personal 
idea  in  the  mind.  The  ideal  persons  of  religion  are 
not  fundamentally  different,  psychologically  or  so- 
ciologically, from  other  persons;  they  are  personal 
ideas  built  up  in  the  mind  out  of  the  material  at  its 
disposal,  and  serving  to  appease  its  need  for  a  sort  of 
intercourse  that  will  give  scope  to  reverence,  sub- 
mission, trust,  and  self-expanding  enthusiasm.  So  far 
as  they  are  present  to  thought  and  emotion,  and  so 
work  upon  life,  they  are  real,  with  that  immediate 
social  reality  discussed  in  the  third  chapter.  The 
fact  that  they  have  attached  to  them  no  visible  or 
tangible  material  body,  similar  to  that  of  other  persons, 
is  indeed  an  important  fact,  but  rather  of  physiological 
than  of  psychological  or  social  interest.  Perhaps  it 
is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that  the  idea  of  God  is 
specially  mysterious  only  from  a  physiological  point 
of  view;  mentally  and  socially  regarded  it  is  of  one  sort 
with  other  personal  ideas,  no  less  a  verifiable  fact, 

315 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  no  more  or  less  inscrutable.  It  must  be  obvious 
to  any  one  who  reflects  upon  the  matter,  I  should 
think,  that  our  conceptions  of  personality,  from  the 
simple  and  sensuous  notions  a  little  child  has  of  those 
about  him,  up  to  the  noblest  and  fullest  idea  of  deity 
that  man  can  achieve,  are  one  in  kind,  as  being  imagi- 
native interpretations  of  experience,  and  form  a  series 
in  which  there  are  no  breaks,  no  gap  between  human 
and  divine.  All  is  human,  and  all,  if  you  please,  di- 
vine. 

If  there  are  any  who  hold  that  nothing  is  real  except 
what  can  be  seen  and  touched,  they  will  necessarily 
forego  the  study  of  persons  and  of  society;  because 
these  things  are  essentially  intangible  and  invisible. 
The  bodily  presence  furnishes  important  assistance  in 
the  forming  of  personal  ideas,  but  is  not  essential.  I 
never  saw  Shakespeare,  and  have  no  lively  notion  of 
how  he  looked.  His  reality,  his  presence  to  my  mind, 
consists  in  a  characteristic  impression  made  upon  me 
by  his  recorded  words,  an  imaginative  interpretation 
or  inference  from  a  book.  In  a  manner  equally  nat- 
ural and  simple  the  religious  mind  comes  to  the  idea 
of  personal  deity  by  a  spontaneous  interpretation  of 
life  as  a  whole.  The  two  ideas  are  equally  real,  equally 
incapable  of  verification  to  the  senses. 


316 


CHAPTER   IX 
LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

LEADERSHIP   DEFINES   AND  ORGANIZES  VAGUE  TENDENCY POWER 

AS  BASED  UPON  THE  MENTAL  STATE  OF  THE  ONE  SUBJECT  TO 
IT — THE  MENTAL  TRAITS  OF  A  LEADER:  SIGNIFICANCE  AND 
BREADTH — WHY  THE  FAME  AND  POWER  OF  A  MAN  OFTEN 
TRANSCEND  HIS  REAL  CHARACTER — ASCENDANCY  OF  BELIEF 
AND  HOPE — MYSTERY — GOOD  FAITH  AND  IMPOSTURE — DOE3 
THE  LEADER  REALLY  LEAD? 

But  how  do  we  choose  our  heroes?  What  is  it  that 
gives  leadership  to  some  and  denies  it  to  others  ?  Can 
we  make  out  anything  like  a  rationale  of  personal 
ascendancy?  We  can  hardly  hope  for  a  complete 
answer  to  these  questions,  which  probe  the  very  heart 
of  life  and  tendency,  but  at  least  the  attempt  to  an- 
swer them,  so  far  as  possible,  will  bring  us  into  an  in- 
teresting line  of  thought. 

It  is  plain  that  the  theory  of  ascendancy  involves 
the  question  of  the  mind's  relative  valuation  of  the 
suggestions  coming  to  it  from  other  minds;  leadership 
depending  upon  the  efficacy  of  a  personal  impres- 
sion to  awaken  feeling,  thought,  action,  and  so  to  be- 
come a  cause  of  life.  While  there  are  some  men  who 
seem  but  to  add  one  to  the  population,  there  are 
others  whom  we  cannot  help  thinking  about;  they 
lend  arguments  to  their  neighbors'  creeds,  so  that  the 
life  of  their  contemporaries,  and  perhaps  of  following 
generations,   is  notably  different  because  they  have 

317 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

lived.  The  immediate  reason  for  this  difference  is 
evidently  that  in  the  one  case  there  is  something  semi- 
nal or  generative  in  the  relation  between  the  personal 
impression  a  man  makes  and  the  mind  that  receives 
it,  which  is  lacking  in  the  other  case.  If  we  could  go 
farther  than  this  and  discover  what  it  is  that  makes 
certain  suggestions  seminal  or  generative,  we  should 
throw  much  light  on  leadership,  and  through  that  on 
all  questions  of  social  tendency. 

We  are  born  with  a  vaguely  differentiated  mass  of 
mental  tendency,  vast  and  potent,  but  unformed  and 
needing  direction — informe,  ingens,  cui  lumen  adsmptum. 
This  instinctive  material  is  believed  to  be  the  outcome 
of  age-long  social  development  in  the  race,  and  hence  to 
be,  in  a  general  way,  expressive  of  that  development  and 
functional  in  its  continuance.  The  process  of  evolu- 
tion has  established  a  probability  that  a  man  will  find 
himself  at  home  in  the  world  into  which  he  comes, 
and  prepared  to  share  in  its  activities.  Besides  the 
tendency  to  various  sorts  of  emotion,  we  have  the 
thinking  instinct,  the  intelligence,  which  seems  to  be 
fairly  distinct  from  emotion  and  whose  function  in- 
cludes the  co-ordination  and  organization  of  other 
instinctive  material  with  reference  to  the  situations 
which  life  offers. 

At  any  particular  stage  of  individual  existence, 
these  elements,  together  with  the  suggestions  from 
the  world  without,  are  found  more  or  less  perfectly 
organized  into  a  living,  growing  whole,  a  person,  a 
man.  Obscurely  locked  within  him,  inscrutable  to 
himself  as  to  others,  is  the  soul  of  the  whole  past,  his 

318 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

portion  of  the  energy,  the  passion,  the  tendency,  of 
human  life.  Its  existence  creates  a  vague  need  to 
live,  to  feel,  to  act;  but  he  cannot  fulfil  this  need,  at 
least  not  in  a  normal  way,  without  incitement  from 
outside  to  loosen  aad  direct  his  instinctive  aptitude. 
There  is  explosive  material  stored  up  in  him,  but  it 
cannot  go  off  unless  the  right  spark  reaches  it,  and 
that  spark  is  usually  some  sort  of  a  personal  suggestion, 
some  living  trait  that  sets  life  free  and  turns  restless- 
ness into  power. 

It  must  be  evident  that  we  can  look  for  no  cut-and- 
dried  theory  of  this  life-imparting  force,  no  algebraic 
formula  for  leadership.  We  know  but  little  of  the 
depths  of  human  tendency;  and  those  who  know  most 
are  possibly  the  poets,  whose  knowledge  is  little  avail- 
able for  precise  uses.  Moreover,  the  problem  varies 
incalculably  with  sex,  age,  race,  inherited  idiosyncrasy, 
and  previous  personal  development.  The  general  no- 
tions of  evolution,  however,  lead  us  to  expect  that 
what  awakens  life  and  so  gives  ascendancy  will  be 
something  important  or  functional  in  the  past  life  of 
the  race,  something  appealing  to  instincts  which  have 
survived  because  they  had  a  part  to  perform;  and  this, 
generally  speaking,  appears  to  be  the  case. 

The  prime  condition  of  ascendancy  is  the  presence 
of  undirected  energy  in  the  person  over  whom  it  is  to 
be  exercised;  it  is  not  so  much  forced  upon  us  from 
without  as  demanded  from  within.  The  mind,  hav- 
ing energy,  must  work,  and  requires  a  guide,  a  form 
of  thought,   to  facilitate  its  working.     All  views  of 

319 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

b'fe  are  fallacious  which  do  not  recognize  the  fact 
that  the  primary  need  is  the  need  to  do.  Every 
healthy  organism  evolves  energy,  and  this  must  have 
an  outlet.  In  the  human  mind,  during  its  expanding 
period,  the  excess  of  life  takes  the  form  of  a  reaching 
out  beyond  all  present  and  familiar  things  after  an 
unknown  good;  no  matter  what  the  present  and  fa- 
miliar may  be,  the  fact  that  it  is  such  is  enough  to 
make  it  inadequate.  So  we  have  a  vague  onward 
impulse,  which  is  the  unorganized  material,  the  un- 
differentiated protoplasm,  so  to  speak,  of  all  progress; 
and  this,  as  we  have  seen,  makes  the  eagerness  of  hero- 
worship  in  the  young,  imaginative,  and  aspiring.  So 
long  as  our  minds  and  hearts  are  open  and  capable  of 
progress,  there  are  persons  that  have  a  glamour  for 
us,  of  whom  we  think  with  reverence  and  aspiration; 
and  although  the  glamour  may  pass  from  them  and 
leave  them  commonplace,  it  will  have  fixed  itself 
somewhere  else.  In  youth  the  mind,  eager,  searching, 
forward-looking,  stands  at  what  Professor  Baldwin 
calls  the  alter  pole  of  the  socius,  peering  forth  in  search 
of  new  life.  And  the  idealist  at  any  age  needs  superi- 
ority in  others  and  is  always  in  quest  of  it.  "Dear 
to  us  are  those  who  love  us,  .  .  .  but  dearer  are  those 
who  reject  us  as  unworthy,  for  they  add  another  life; 
they  build  a  heaven  before  us  whereof  we  had  not 
dreamed,  and  thereby  supply  to  us  new  powers  out  of 
the  recesses  of  the  spirit,  and  urge  us  to  new  and  un- 
attempted  performances."  *  To  cease  to  admire  is 
a  proof  of  deterioration. 

*  Emerson,  New  England  Reformers, 
320 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

Most  people  will  be  able  to  recall  vague  yet  in- 
tensely vivid  personal  impressions  that  they  have  re- 
ceived from  faces — perhaps  from  a  single  glance  of  a 
countenance  that  they  have  never  seen  before  or 
since — or  perhaps  from  a  voice;  and  these  impres- 
sions often  remain  and  grow  and  become  an  important 
factor  in  life.  The  explanation  is  perhaps  something 
like  this:  When  we  receive  these  mysterious  influences 
we  are  usually  in  a  peculiarly  impressionable  state, 
with  nervous  energy  itching  to  be  worked  off.  There 
is  pressure  in  the  obscure  reservoirs  of  hereditary 
passion.  In  some  way,  which  we  can  hardly  expect 
to  define,  this  energy  is  tapped,  an  instinct  is  dis- 
engaged, the  personal  suggestion  conveyed  in  the 
glance  is  felt  as  the  symbol,  the  master-key  that  can 
unlock  hidden  tendency.  It  is  much  the  same  as  when 
electricity  stored  and  inert  in  a  jar  is  loosed  by  a  chance 
contact  of  wires  that  completes  the  circuit;  the  mind 
holds  fast  the  life-imparting  suggestion;  cannot,  in 
fact,  let  go  of  it. 

" all  night  long  his  face  before  her  lived, 

Dark-splendid,  speaking  in  the  silence,  full 
Of  noble  things,  and  held  her  from  her  sleep." 

It  is  true  of  races,  as  of  individuals,  that  the  more 
vitality  and  onwardness  they  have,  the  more  they 
need  ideals  and  a  leadership  that  gives  form  to  them. 
A  strenuous  people  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  must  have 
something  to  look  forward  and  up  to,  since  without 
faith  of  some  sort  they  must  fall  into  dissipation  or 
despair;  they  can  never  be  content  with  that  calm 

321 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  symmetrical  enjoyment  of  the  present  which  is 
thought  to  have  been  characteristic  of  the  ancient 
Greeks.  To  be  sure  it  is  said,  and  no  doubt  with 
truth,  that  the  people  of  Northern  Europe  are  less 
hero-worshippers  than  those  of  the  South,  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  less  given  to  blind  enthusiasm  for 
popular  idols;  but  this,  I  take  it,  only  means  that 
the  former,  having  more  constructive  power  in  build- 
ing up  ideals  from  various  personal  sources,  and  more 
persistence  in  adhering  to  them  when  thus  built  up, 
are  more  sober  and  independent  in  their  judgment  of 
particular  persons,  and  less  liable  to  extravagant  ad- 
miration of  the  hero  of  the  moment.  But  their  ideal- 
ism is  all  the  more  potent  for  this,  and  at  bottom  is 
just  as  dependent  upon  personal  suggestion  for  its 
definition.  Thus  it  is  likely  that  all  leadership  will 
be  found  to  be  such  by  virtue  of  defining  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  mind.  "If  we  survey  the  field  of  his- 
tory," says  Professor  William  James,  "and  ask  what 
feature  all  great  periods  of  revival,  of  expansion  of 
the  human  mind,  display  in  common,  we  shall  find,  I 
think,  simply  this;  that  each  and  all  of  them  have 
said  to  the  human  being,  'the  inmost  nature  of  the 
reality  is  congenial  to  powers  which  you  possess'";* 
and  the  same  principle  evidently  applies  to  personal 
leadership. 

We  are  born  to  action;  and  whatever  is  capable  of 
suggesting  and  guiding  action  has  power  over  us  from 
the  first.  The  attention  of  the  new-born  child  is 
fixed  by  whatever  exercises  the  senses,  through  mo- 

*  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  p.  314. 
322 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

tion,  noise,  touch,  or  color.  Persons  and  animals 
interest  him  primarily  because  they  offer  a  greater 
amount  and  variety  of  sensible  stimulus  than  other 
objects.  They  move,  talk,  laugh,  coax,  fondle,  bring 
food,  and  so  on.  The  prestige  they  thus  acquire  over 
the  child's  mind  is  shared  with  such  other  stimulating 
phenomena  as  cars,  engines,  windmills,  patches  of 
sunlight,  and  bright-colored  garments.  A  little  later, 
when  he  begins  to  acquire  some  control  over  his  ac- 
tivities, he  welcomes  eagerly  whatever  can  partici- 
pate in  and  so  stimulate  and  guide  them.  The  play- 
things he  cares  for  are  those  that  go,  or  that  he  can  do 
something  with — carts,  fire-engines,  blocks,  and  the 
like.  Persons,  especially  those  that  share  his  interests, 
maintain  and  increase  their  ascendancy,  and  other 
children,  preferably  a  little  older  and  of  more  varied 
resources  than  himself,  are  particularly  welcome. 
Among  grown-ups  he  admires  most  those  who  do  some- 
thing that  he  can  understand,  whom  he  can  appreciate 
as  actors  and  producers — such  as  the  carpenter,  the 
gardener,  the  maid  in  the  kitchen.  R.  invented  the 
happy  word  "thinger"  to  describe  this  sort  of  peo- 
ple, and  while  performing  similar  feats  would  proudly 
proclaim  himself  a  thinger. 

It  will  be  observed  that  at  this  stage  a  child  has 
learned  to  reflect  upon  action  and  to  discriminate 
that  which  is  purposeful  and  effective  from  mere  mo- 
tion; he  has  gained  the  notion  of  power.  Himself 
constantly  trying  to  do  things,  he  learns  to  admire 
those  who  can  do  things  better  than  himself,  or  who 
can  suggest  new  things  to  do.     His  father  sitting  at 

323 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

his  desk  probably  seems  an  inert  and  unattractive 
phenomenon,  but  the  man  who  can  make  shavings  or 
dig  a  deep  hole  is  a  hero;  and  the  seemingly  perverse 
admiration  which  children  at  a  later  age  show  for 
circus  men  and  for  the  pirates  and  desperadoes  they 
read  about,  is  to  be  explained  in  a  similar  manner. 
What  they  want  is  evident  power.  The  scholar  may 
possibly  be  as  worthy  of  admiration  as  the  acrobat 
or  the  policeman;  but  the  boy  of  ten  will  seldom  see 
the  matter  in  that  light. 

Thus  the  idea  of  power  and  the  types  of  personality 
which,  as  standing  for  that  idea,  have  ascendancy  over 
us,  are  a  function  of  our  own  changing  character.  At 
one  stage  of  their  growth  nearly  all  imaginative  boys 
look  upon  some  famous  soldier  as  the  ideal  man.  He 
holds  this  place  as  symbol  and  focus  for  the  aggressive, 
contending,  dominating  impulses  of  vigorous  boyhood; 
to  admire  and  sympathize  with  him  is  to  gratify, 
imaginatively,  these  impulses.  In  this  country  some 
notable  speaker  and  party  leader  often  succeeds  the 
soldier  as  a  boyish  ideal;  his  career  is  almost  equally 
dominating  and  splendid,  and,  in  time  of  peace,  not 
quite  so  remote  from  reasonable  aspiration.  In  later 
life  these  simple  ideals  are  likely  to  yield  somewhat  to 
others  of  a  more  special  character,  depending  upon  the 
particular  pursuit  into  which  one's  energies  are  di- 
rected. Every  occupation  which  is  followed  with 
enthusiasm  has  its  heroes,  men  who  stand  for  the  idea 
of  power  or  efficient  action  as  understood  by  persons 
of  a  particular  training  and  habit.  The  world  of 
commerce  and  industry  is  full  of  hero-worship,  and 

324 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

men  who  have  made  great  fortunes  are  admired,  not 
unjustly,  for  the  personal  prowess  such  success  implies; 
while  people  of  a  finer  intellectual  development  have 
their  notion  of  power  correspondingly  refined,  and  to 
them  the  artist,  the  poet,  the  man  of  science,  the 
philanthropist,  may  stand  for  the  highest  sort  of  suc- 
cessful action. 

It  should  be  observed,  however,  that  the  simpler 
and  more  dramatic  or  visually  imaginable  kinds  of 
power  have  a  permanent  advantage  as  regards  general 
ascendancy.  Only  a  few  can  appreciate  the  power  of 
Darwin,  and  those  few  only  when  the  higher  faculties 
of  their  minds  are  fully  awake;  there  is  nothing  dra- 
matic, nothing  appealing  to  the  visual  imagination, 
in  his  secluded  career.  But  we  can  all  see  Grant  or 
Nelson  or  Moltke  at  the  headquarters  of  their  armies, 
or  on  the  decks  of  their  ships,  and  hear  the  roar  of 
their  cannons.  They  hold  one  by  the  eye  and  by  the 
swelling  of  an  emotion  felt  to  be  common  to  a  vast 
multitude  of  people.  There  is  always  something  of 
the  intoxication  of  the  crowd  in  the  submission  to 
this  sort  of  ascendancy.  However  alone  our  bodies 
may  be,  our  imaginations  are  in  the  throng;  and  for 
my  part  whenever  I  think  of  any  occasion  when  a  man 
played  a  great  part  before  the  eyes  of  mankind,  I  feel 
a  thrill  of  irrational  enthusiasm.  I  should  imagine, 
for  instance,  that  scarcely  any  one  could  read  such 
a  thing  as  "Sheridan's  Ride"  without  strong  feeling. 
He  witnesses  the  disorder,  uncertainty,  and  dismay 
of  the  losing  battle,  the  anxious  officers  trying  to  stay 
the  retreat,  and  longing  for  the  commander  who  has 

325 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

always  led  to  victory.  Then  he  follows  the  ride  from 
"Winchester  twenty  miles  away,"  and  shares  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  army  when  the  valiant  and  beloved 
leader  rides  forth  upon  the  field  at  last,  renewing  every 
heart  by  his  presence  and  making  victory  out  of  de- 
feat. In  comparison  with  this  other  kinds  of  power 
seem  obscure  and  separate.  It  is  the  drama  of  visi- 
ble courage,  danger,  and  success,  and  the  sense  of 
being  one  of  a  throng  to  behold  it,  that  makes  the  dif- 
ference. 

This  need  of  a  dramatic  or  visually  imaginable 
presentation  of  power  is  no  doubt  more  imperative  in 
the  childlike  peoples  of  Southern  Europe  than  it  is 
in  the  sedater  and  more  abstractly  imaginative  Teu- 
tons; but  it  is  strong  in  every  people,  and  is  shared 
by  the  most  intellectual  classes  in  their  emotional 
moods.  Consequently  these  heroes  of  the  popular 
imagination,  especially  those  of  war,  are  enabled  to 
serve  as  the  instigators  of  a  common  emotion  in  great 
masses  of  people,  and  thus  to  produce  in  large  groups 
a  sense  of  comradeship  and  solidarity.  The  admira- 
tion and  worship  of  such  heroes  is  possibly  the  chief 
feeling  that  people  have  in  common  in  all  early  stages 
of  civilization,  and  the  main  bond  of  social  groups. 
Even  in  our  own  time  this  is  more  the  case  than  is 
understood.  It  was  easy  to  see,  during  the  Spanish- 
American  War,  that  the  eager  interest  of  the  whole 
American  people  in  the  military  operations,  and  the 
general  and  enthusiastic  admiration  of  every  trait  of 
heroism,  was  bringing  about  a  fresh  sense  of  com- 

326 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

munity  throughout  the  country  and  so  renewing  and 
consolidating  the  collective  life  of  the  nation. 

If  we  ask  what  are  the  mental  traits  that  distinguish 
a  leader,  the  only  answer  seems  to  be  that  he  must, 
in  one  way  or  another,  be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  or  at 
least  appear  to  be.  He  must  stand  for  something  to 
which  men  incline,  and  so  take  his  place  by  right  as 
a  focus  of  their  thought. 

Evidently  he  must  be  the  best  of  his  kind  avail- 
able. It  is  impossible  that  he  should  stand  forth  as 
an  archetype,  unless  he  is  conceived  as  superior,  in 
some  respect,  to  all  others  within  range  of  the  imagina- 
tion. Nothing  that  is  seen  to  be  second-rate  can  be 
an  ideal;  if  a  character  does  not  bound  the  horizon 
at  some  point  we  will  look  over  it  to  what  we  can  see 
beyond.  The  object  of  admiration  may  be  Caesar 
Borgia,  or  Napoleon,  or  Jesse  James  the  train-robber, 
but  he  must  be  typical,  must  stand  for  something. 
No  matter  how  bad  the  leader  may  be,  he  will  always 
be  found  to  owe  his  leadership  to  something  strong, 
affirmative,  and  superior,  something  that  appeals  to 
onward  instinct. 

To  be  a  great  deal  of  a  man,  and  hence  a  leader, 
involves,  on  the  one  hand,  a  significant  individuality, 
and,  on  the  other,  breadth  of  sympathy,  the  two  being 
different  phases  of  personal  caliber,  rather  than  sep- 
arate traits. 

It  is  because  a  man  cannot  stand  for  anything  ex- 
cept as  he  has  a  significant  individuality,  that  self- 

327 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

reliance  is  so  essential  a  trait  in  leadership:  except  as 
a  person  trusts  and  cherishes  his  own  special  ten- 
dency, different  from  that  of  other  people  and  usually 
opposed  by  them  in  its  inception,  he  can  never  de- 
velop anything  of  peculiar  value.  He  has  to  free 
himself  from  the  domination  of  purposes  already  de- 
fined and  urged  upon  him  by  others,  and  bring  up 
something  fresh  out  of  the  vague  underworld  of  sub- 
consciousness; and  this  means  an  intense  self,  a  mili- 
tant, gloating  "I."  Emerson's  essay  on  self-reliance 
only  formulates  what  has  always  been  the  creed  of 
significant  persons. 

On  the  other  hand,  success  in  unfolding  a  special 
tendency  and  giving  vogue  to  it,  depends  upon  being 
in  touch,  through  sympathy,  with  the  current  of  hu- 
man life.  All  leadership  takes  place  through  the  com- 
munication of  ideas  to  the  minds  of  others,  and  unless 
the  ideas  are  so  presented  as  to  be  congenial  to  those 
other  minds,  they  will  evidently  be  rejected.  It  is 
because  the  novelty  is  not  alien  to  us,  but  is  seen  to 
be  ourself  in  a  fresh  guise,  that  we  welcome  it. 

It  has  frequently  been  noticed  that  personal  ascen- 
dancy is  not  necessarily  dependent  upon  any  palpable 
deed  in  which  power  is  manifested,  but  that  there  is 
often  a  conviction  of  power  and  an  expectation  of 
success  that  go  before  the  deed  and  control  the  minds 
of  men  without  apparent  reason.  There  is  something 
fascinating  about  this  immediate  and  seemingly  cause- 
less personal  efficacy,  and  many  writers  of  insight  lay 
great  stress  upon  it.  Emerson,  for  example,  is  fond  of 
pointing  out  that  the  highest  sort  of  greatness  is  self- 

32S 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

evident,  without  particular  works.  Most  men  of 
executive  force  possess  something  of  this  direct  as- 
cendancy, and  some,  like  Napoleon,  Cromwell,  Bis- 
marck, and  Andrew  Jackson,  have  had  it  in  pre-emi- 
nent measure.  It  is  not  confined  to  any  class,  however, 
but  exists  in  an  infinite  variety  of  kinds  and  degrees; 
and  men  of  thought  may  have  it  as  well  as  men  of 
action.  Dante,  Milton,  Goethe,  and  their  like,  bear 
the  authority  to  dominate  the  minds  of  others  like  a 
visible  mantle  upon  their  shoulders,  inspiring  a  sense 
of  reverence  and  a  tendency  to  believe  and  follow  in 
all  the  impressionable  people  they  meet.  Such  men 
are  only  striking  examples  of  what  we  are  all  familiar 
with  in  daily  life,  most  persons  of  decided  character 
having  something  imposing  about  them  at  times. 
Indeed,  there  is  hardly  any  one  so  insignificant  that 
he  does  not  seem  imposing  to  some  one  at  some  time. 
Notwithstanding  the  mystery  that  is  often  made  of 
this,  it  appears  to  be  simply  a  matter  of  impulsive 
personal  judgment,  an  impression  of  power,  and  a 
sense  of  yielding  due  to  interpretation  of  the  visible 
or  audible  symbols  of  personality,  discussed  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter.  Another  may  impress  us  with  his 
power,  and  so  exercise  ascendancy  over  us,  either 
by  grossly  performing  the  act,  or  by  exhibiting  traits 
of  personality  which  convince  our  imaginations  that 
he  can  and  will  do  the  act  if  he  wishes  to.  It  is  in 
this  latter  way,  through  imaginative  inference,  that 
people  mostly  work  upon  us  in  ordinary  social  inter- 
course. It  would  puzzle  us,  in  many  cases,  to  tell 
just  how  we  know  that  a  man  is  determined,  daunt- 

329 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

less,  magnanimous,  intrinsically  powerful,  or  the  re- 
verse. Of  course  reputation  and  past  record  count 
for  much;  but  we  judge  readily  enough  without  them, 
and  if,  like  Orlando  in  "As  You  Like  It,"  he  "looks  suc- 
cessfully," we  believe  in  him.  The  imagination  is  a 
sort  of  clearing-house  through  which  great  forces  op- 
erate by  convenient  symbols  and  with  a  minimum  of 
trouble. 

The  man  of  action  who,  like  Napoleon,  can  domi- 
nate the  minds  of  others  in  a  crisis,  must  have  the 
general  traits  of  leadership  developed  with  special 
reference  to  the  promptness  of  their  action.  Hi3 
individual  significance  must  take  the  form  of  a  palpa- 
ble decision  and  self-confidence;  and  breadth  of  sym- 
pathy becomes  a  quick  tact  to  grasp  the  mental  state 
of  those  with  whom  he  deals,  so  that  he  may  know 
how  to  plant  the  dominating  suggestion.  Into  the 
vagueness  and  confusion  that  most  of  us  feel  in  the 
face  of  a  strange  situation,  such  a  man  injects  a  clear- 
cut  idea.  There  is  a  definiteness  about  him  which 
makes  us  feel  that  he  will  not  leave  us  drifting,  but 
will  set  a  course,  will  substitute  action  for  doubt,  and 
give  our  energies  an  outlet.  Again,  his  aggressive 
confidence  is  transmitted  by  suggestion,  and  acts 
directly  upon  our  minds  as  a  sanction  of  his  leader- 
ship. And  if  he  adds  to  this  the  tact  to  awaken  no 
opposition,  to  make  us  feel  that  he  is  of  our  sort,  that 
his  suggestions  are  quite  in  our  line,  in  a  word  that 
we  are  safe  in  his  hands;  he  can  hardly  be  resisted. 

In  face-to-face  relations,  then,  the  natural  leader  is 
one  who  always  has  the  appearance  of  being  master 

330 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

of  the  situation.  He  includes  other  people  and  ex- 
tends beyond  them,  and  so  is  in  a  position  to  point 
out  what  they  must  do  next.  Intellectually  his  sug- 
gestion seems  to  embrace  what  is  best  in  the  views  of 
others,  and  to  embody  the  inevitable  conclusion;  it 
is  the  timely,  the  fit,  and  so  the  prevalent.  Emotion- 
ally his  belief  is  the  strongest  force  present,  and  so 
draws  other  beliefs  into  it.  Yet,  while  he  imposes 
himself  upon  others,  he  feels  the  other  selves  as  part 
of  the  situation,  and  so  adapts  himself  to  them  that 
no  opposition  is  awakened;  or  possibly  he  may  take 
the  violent  method,  and  browbeat  and  humiliate  a 
weak  mind:  there  are  various  ways  of  establishing 
superiority,  but  in  one  way  or  another  the  consum- 
mate leader  always  accomplishes  it. 

Take  Bismarck  as  an  example  of  almost  irresistible 
personal  ascendancy  in  face-to-face  relations.  He 
had  the  advantage,  which,  however,  many  men  of 
equal  power  have  done  without,  of  an  imposing  bulk 
and  stature;  but  much  more  than  this  were  the  mental 
and  moral  traits  which  made  him  appear  the  natural 
master  in  an  assembly  of  the  chief  diplomats  of  Eu- 
rope. "No  idea  can  be  formed,"  says  M.  de  Blowitz,* 
"of  the  ascendancy  exercised  by  the  German  Chan- 
cellor over  the  eminent  diplomatists  attending  the 
Congress.  Prince  Gortchakoff  alone,  eclipsed  by  his 
rival's  greatness,  tried  to  struggle  against  him."  His 
"great  and  scornful  pride,"  the  absolute,  contemptu- 
ous assurance  of  superiority  which  was  evident  in 
every  pose,  tone,  and  gesture,  accompanied,  as  is  pos- 
*  In  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  78,  p.  870. 
331 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sible  only  to  one  perfectly  sure  of  himself,  by  a  frank- 
ness, good-humor,  and  cordial  insight  into  others 
which  seemed  to  make  them  one  with  himself,  par- 
ticipators in  his  domination;  together  with  a  pene- 
trating intelligence,  a  unique  and  striking  way  of 
expressing  himself,  and  a  perfect  clearness  of  purpose 
at  all  times,  were  among  the  elements  of  the  effect 
he  produced.  He  conciliated  those  whom  he  thought 
it  worth  while  to  conciliate,  and  browbeat,  ignored, 
or  ridiculed  the  rest.  There  was  nothing  a  rival  could 
say  or  do  but  Bismarck,  if  he  chose,  would  say  or  do 
something  which  made  it  appear  a  failure. 

General  Grant  was  a  man  whose  personal  presence 
had  none  of  the  splendor  of  Prince  Bismarck,  and  who 
even  appeared  insignificant  to  the  undiscerning.  It 
is  related  that  when  he  went  to  take  command  of  his 
first  regiment  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  officer  whom  he  was  to  succeed  paid  no  at- 
tention to  him  at  first,  and  would  not  believe  that  he 
was  Grant  until  he  showed  his  papers.  An  early 
acquaintance  said  of  him,  "He  hadn't  the  push  of  a 
business  man."  "He  was  always  a  gentleman,  and 
everybody  loved  him,  for  he  was  so  gentle  and  con- 
siderate; but  we  didn't  see  what  he  could  do  in  the 
world."  *  Yet  over  the  finer  sort  of  men  he  exercised 
a  great  ascendancy,  and  no  commander  was  more  will- 
ingly obeyed  by  his  subordinates,  or  inspired  more 
general  confidence.  In  his  way  he  manifested  the 
essential  traits  of  decision,  self-confidence,  and  tact 

*  Reminiscences  quoted  by  Garland  in  McClure's  Magazine, 
April,  1897. 

332 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL*  ASCENDANCY 

in  great  measure.  He  never  appeared  dubious,  ner- 
vous, or  unsettled;  and,  though  he  often  talked  over 
his  plans  with  trusted  officers,  he  only  once,  I  be- 
lieve, summoned  a  council  of  war,  and  then  rejected 
its  decision.  He  was  nearly  or  quite  alone  in  his 
faith  in  the  plan  by  which  Vicksburg  was  taken,  and 
it  is  well  known  that  General  Sherman,  convinced 
that  it  would  fail,  addressed  him  a  formal  remon- 
strance, which  Grant  quietly  put  in  his  pocket  and 
later  returned  to  its  author.  "His  pride  in  his  own 
mature  opinion,"  says  General  Schofield,  "was  very 
great;  in  that  he  was  as  far  as  possible  from  being  a 
modest  man.  This  absolute  confidence  in  his  own 
judgment  upon  any  subject  he  had  mastered,  and  the 
moral  courage  to  take  upon  himself  alone  the  highest 
responsibility,  and  to  demand  full  authority  and  free- 
dom to  act  according  to  his  own  judgment,  without 
interference  from  anybody,  added  to  his  accurate 
estimate  of  his  own  ability,  and  his  clear  perception 
of  the  necessity  for  undivided  authority  and  respon- 
sibility in  the  conduct  of  military  operations,  and  in 
all  that  concerns  the  efficiency  of  armies  in  time  of 
war,  constituted  the  foundation  of  that  very  great 
character."  *  He  was  also  a  man  of  great  tact  and 
insight.  He  always  felt  the  personal  situation;  di- 
vining the  character  and  aims  of  his  antagonists,  and 
making  his  own  officers  feel  that  he  understood  them 
and  appreciated  whatever  in  them  was  worthy. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  a  boastful  spirit  is  attrib- 

*  From  a  letter  published  in  the  newspapers  at  the  time  of 
the  dedication  of  the  Grant  Monument,  in  April,  1897. 

333 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

uted  to  Americans,  the  complete  renunciation  of  ex- 
ternal display  so  noticeable  in  General  Grant  is  con- 
genial to  the  American  mind,  and  characteristic  of  a 
large  proportion  of  our  most  successful  and  admired 
men.  Undoubtedly  our  typical  hero  is  the  man  who 
is  capable  of  anything,  but  thinks  it  unbecoming  to 
obtrude  the  fact.  Possibly  it  is  our  self-reliant,  dem- 
ocratic mode  of  life,  which,  since  it  offers  a  constant 
and  varied  test  of  the  realities,  as  distinct  from  the 
appearances,  gives  rise  to  a  contempt  of  the  latter, 
and  of  those  arts  of  pretense  which  impose  upon  a 
less  sophisticated  people.  The  truth  about  us  is  so 
accessible  that  cant  becomes  comparatively  trans- 
parent and  ridiculous.* 

There  is  no  better  phenomenon  in  which  to  ob- 
serve personal  ascendancy  than  public  speaking. 
When  a  man  takes  the  floor  in  an  assembly,  all  eyes 
are  fixed  upon  him,  all  imaginations  set  to  work  to 
divine  his  personality  and  significance.  If  he  looks 
like  a  true  and  steadfast  man,  of  a  spirit  kindred 
with  our  own,  we  incline  to  him  before  he  speaks, 
and  believe  that  what  he  says  will  be  congenial  and 
right.  We  have  all,  probably,  seen  one  arise  in  the 
midst  of  an  audience  strange  to  him,  and  by  his  mere 
attitude  and  expression  of  countenance  create  a  sub- 
tle sense  of  community  and  expectation  of  consent. 
Another,  on  the  contrary,  will  at  once  impress  us  as 

*  Mr.  Howells  remarks  that  "in  Europe  life  is  histrionic  and 
dramatized,  and  that  in  America,  except  when  it  is  trying  to  be 
European,  it  is  direct  and  sincere." — '"Their  Silver  Wedding 
Journey,"  Harper's  Magazine,  September,  1899. 

334 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

self-conceited,  insincere,  overexcited,  cold,  narrow,  or 
in  some  other  way  out  of  touch  with  us,  and  not  likely 
to  say  anything  that  will  suit  us.  As  our  first  speaker 
proceeds,  he  continues  to  create  a  sense  that  he  feels 
the  situation;  we  are  at  home  and  comfortable  with 
him,  because  he  seems  to  be  of  our  sort,  having  similar 
views  and  not  likely  to  lead  us  wrong;  it  is  like  the 
ease  and  relaxation  that  one  feels  among  old  friends. 
There  can  be  no  perfect  eloquence  that  does  not  cre- 
ate this  sense  of  personal  congeniality.  But  this  def- 
erence to  our  character  and  mood  is  only  the  basis 
for  exerting  power  over  us;  he  is  what  we  are,  but  is 
much  more;  is  decided  where  we  were  vacillating, 
clear  where  we  were  vague,  warm  where  we  were 
cold.  He  offers  something  affirmative  and  onward, 
and  gives  it  the  momentum  of  his  own  belief.  A 
man  may  lack  everything  but  tact  and  conviction  and 
still  be  a  forcible  speaker;  but  without  these  nothing 
will  avail.  "Speak  only  what  you  do  know  and  be- 
lieve, and  are  personally  in  it,  and  are  answerable 
for  every  word."  In  comparison  with  these  traits  of 
mind  and  character,  fluency,  grace,  logical  order,  and 
the  like,  are  merely  the  decorative  surface  of  oratory, 
which  is  well  enough  in  its  subordinate  place,  but  can 
easily  be  dispensed  with.  Bismarck  was  not  the  less 
a  great  orator  because  he  spoke  "with  difficulty  and 
an  appearance  of  struggle,"  and  Cromwell's  rude  elo- 
quence would  hardly  have  been  improved  by  lessons 
in  elocution. 

Burke  is  an  example  of  a  man  who  appears  to  have 
had  all  the  attributes  of  a  great  speaker  except  tact, 

335 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  was  conspicuously  contrasted  in  this  respect  with 
Fox,  whose  genial  nature  never  failed  to  keep  touch 
with  the  situation.  A  man  whose  rising  makes  peo- 
ple think  of  going  to  dinner  is  not  distinctively  a 
great  orator,  even  though  his  speeches  are  an  im- 
mortal contribution  to  literature.  The  well-known 
anecdote  of  the  dagger  illustrates  the  unhappy  re- 
sults of  losing  touch  with  the  situation.  In  the  midst 
of  one  of  his  great  discourses  on  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, intending  to  impress  upon  his  hearers  the  bloody 
character  of  that  movement,  Burke  drew  from  his 
bosom  a  dagger  and  cast  it  on  the  floor.  It  so  hap- 
pened, however,  that  the  Members  of  Parliament 
present  were  not  just  then  in  the  mood  to  be  duly 
impressed  by  this  exhibition,  which  produced  only 
astonishment  and  ridicule.  Fox  could  never  have 
done  a  thing  of  this  sort.  With  all  Burke's  greatness, 
it  would  seem  that  there  must  have  been  something 
narrow,  strenuous,  and  at  times  even  repellent,  in 
his  personality  and  manner,  some  lack  of  ready  fellow 
feeling,  allowing  him  to  lose  that  sense  of  the  situation 
without  which  there  can  hardly  be  any  face-to-face 
ascendancy. 

The  ascendancy  which  an  author  exercises  over  us 
by  means  of  the  written  page  is  the  same  in  essence 
as  that  of  the  man  of  action  or  the  orator.  The  me- 
dium of  communication  is  different;  visible  or  audible 
traits  give  place  to  subtler  indications.  There  is 
also  more  time  for  reflection,  and  reader  or  writer  can 
choose  the  mood  most  fit  to  exert  power  or  to  feel  it; 
so  that  there  is  no  need  for  that  constant  prepared- 

336 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

ness  and  aggressiveness  of  voice  and  manner  which 
the  man  of  action  requires.  But  these  are,  after  all, 
incidental  differences;  and  the  underlying  traits  of 
personality,  the  essential  relationship  between  leader 
and  follower,  are  much  the  same  as  in  the  other  cases. 
The  reader  should  feel  that  the  author's  mind  and 
purpose  are  congenial  with  his  own,  though  in  the 
present  direction  they  go  farther,  that  the  thought 
communicated  is  not  at  all  alien,  but  so  truly  his  that 
it  offers  an  opportunity  to  expand  to  a  wider  circle, 
and  become  a  completer  edition  of  himself.  In  short, 
if  an  author  is  to  establish  and  maintain  the  power 
to  interest  us  and,  in  his  province,  to  lead  our  thought, 
he  must  exhibit  personal  significance  and  tact,  in  a 
form  appropriate  to  this  mode  of  expression.  He 
must  have  a  humanity  so  broad  that,  in  certain  of 
our  moods  at  least,  it  gives  a  sense  of  congeniality 
and  at-homeness.  He  must  also  make  a  novel  and 
characteristic  impression  of  some  sort,  a  fresh  and 
authentic  contribution  to  our  life ;  and  must,  moreover, 
be  wholly  himself,  " stand  united  with  his  thought," 
have  that  "truth  to  its  type  of  the  given  force"  of 
which  Walter  Pater  speaks.  He  must  possess  belief 
in  something,  and  simplicity  and  boldness  in  express- 
ing it. 

Take  Darwin  again  for  example,  all  the  better 
because  it  is  sometimes  imagined  that  personality 
is  unimportant  in  scientific  writing.  Probably  few 
thoughtful  and  open-minded  persons  can  read  the 
Origin  of  Species  without  becoming  Darwinists,  yield- 
ing willingly,  for  the  time  at  least,  to  his  ascendancy, 

337 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  feeling  him  as  a  master.  If  we  consider  the 
traits  that  give  him  this  authority,  it  will  be  found 
that  they  are  of  the  same  general  nature  as  those 
already  pointed  out.  As  we  read  his  chapters,  and 
begin  to  build  him  up  in  our  imaginations  out  of  the 
subtle  suggestions  of  style,  we  find  ourselves  think- 
ing of  him  as,  first  of  all,  a  true  and  simple  man,  a 
patient,  sagacious  seeker  after  the  real.  This  makes 
us,  so  far  as  we  are  also  simple  seekers  after  the  real, 
feel  at  home  with  him,  forget  suspicion,  and  incline 
to  believe  as  he  believes,  even  if  we  fail  to  understand 
his  reasons — though  no  man  leaves  us  less  excuse  for 
such  failure.  His  aim  is  our  aim — -the  truth,  and  as 
he  is  far  more  competent  to  achieve  it  in  this  field 
than  we  are,  both  because  of  natural  aptitude  and  a 
lifetime  of  special  research,  we  readily  yield  him  the 
reins,  the  more  so  because  he  never  for  an  instant  de- 
mands it,  but  seems  to  appeal  solely  to  facts. 

How  many  writers  are  there,  even  of  much  ability, 
who  fail,  primarily  and  irretrievably,  because  they 
do  not  make  this  favorable  personal  impression;  be- 
cause we  divine  something  insincere,  something  im- 
patient, some  private  aim  that  is  not  truth,  which 
keeps  us  uncomfortably  on  our  guard  and  makes  us 
reluctant  to  follow  them  even  when  they  appear  most 
incontrovertible  !  Mr.  Huxley  suggested  that  Darwin 
harmed  his  case  by  excessive  and  unnecessary  defer- 
ence to  the  suggestions  of  his  opponents;  but  it  may 
well  be  that  in  the  long  run,  and  with  the  highest  tri- 
bunal, this  trait  has  added  to  his  power.  Many  men 
have  been  convinced  by  the  character  of  Darwin,  by 

338 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

his  obvious  disinterestedness  and  lack  of  all  contro- 
versial bias,  who  would  never  have  followed  Huxley. 
I  have  had  occasion  to  notice  that  there  is  no  way  of 
making  converts  to  the  idea  of  evolution  so  effectual 
as  to  set  people  reading  the  Origin  of  Species.  Spen- 
cerism  comes  and  goes,  but  Darwinism  is  an  abiding 
condition. 

Darwin's  intellectual  significance  no  one  will  ques- 
tion; and  his  self-confidence  or  faith  was  equally  re- 
markable, and  not  at  all  inconsistent  with  his  mod- 
esty. In  his  case  it  seems  a  faith  in  truth  itself,  so 
wholly  is  the  self  we  find  in  his  books  identified  with 
the  striving  after  truth.  As  an  act  of  faith  his  twenty 
years  of  collecting  and  brooding  over  the  facts  bearing 
upon  the  principle  he  had  divined,  was  an  exploit 
of  the  same  nature  as  that  of  Columbus,  sailing  west- 
ward for  months  into  an  unknown  ocean,  to  a  goal 
which  no  one  else  could  see.  And  with  what  simple 
confidence  does  he  take  his  stand  upon  the  truth  thus 
won,  and  apply  it  to  the  geological  history  of  the 
globe,  or  the  rise  of  the  human  body  and  mind.  A 
good  illustration  of  his  faith  is  his  assertion,  in  the 
face  of  ridicule,  that  the  existence  of  an  orchid  with  a 
narrow  neck  eleven  inches  long  proved  the  existence 
of  a  moth  with  a  tongue  of  equal  length.  The  moth, 
at  that  time  unknown,  was  subsequently  discovered.* 

To  illustrate  the  same  principles  in  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent phase  of  thought,  we  might  take  Charles  Lamb. 
Lamb,  too,  attracts  us  first  of  all  by  a  human  and 

*  Related  by  W.  H.  Gibson,  in  Harper's  Magazine  for  May, 
1897. 

339 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

congenial  personality.  We  feel  that  in  the  kinds  of 
sentiment  with  which  he  deals  he  is  at  home  and  ade- 
quate, is  ourselves  and  more  than  we,  with  a  deeper 
pathos,  a  richer,  more  audacious  humor,  a  truer  sen- 
si  biHty.  He,  too,  enlarges  life  by  access  to  novel  and 
acceptable  modes  of  being;  and  he  is  always  boldly 
and  simply  himself.  It  is  a  poor  notion  of  Lamb  that 
does  not  recognize  that  he  was,  in  his  way,  a  man  of 
character,  conviction,  and  faith. 

A  similar  analysis  might  be  applied  to  great  writers 
of  other  sorts — poets,  historians,  and  moralists;  also 
to  painters,  sculptors,  actors,  singers,  to  every  potent 
personality  after  its  kind.  While  there  is  infinite 
variety  in  leadership — according  to  the  characters  of 
the  persons  concerned,  the  points  at  which  they  come 
in  contact,  the  means  of  communication  between 
them,  and  so  on — there  is,  nevertheless,  a  likeness  of 
principle  everywhere  present.  There  is  no  such  radi- 
cal and  complete  divergence  of  the  conditions  of  power 
in  the  various  fields  of  activity  as  is  sometimes  imag- 
ined. While  there  are  great  differences,  they  may  be 
looked  upon  as  specific  rather  than  generic.  We  may 
always  expect  to  find  a  human  nature  sufficiently 
broad  and  sound — at  least  in  those  phases  most  ap- 
parent in  the  special  means  of  expression  chosen — to 
be  felt  as  representative;  also  some  timely  contribu- 
tion added  to  the  range  of  thought  or  feeling,  and  faith 
in  or  loyalty  to  this  peculiar  contribution. 

It  is  a  very  natural  result  of  the  principles  already 
noted  that  the  fame  and  power  of  a  man  often  tran- 

340 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

scend  the  man  himself;  that  is  to  say,  the  personal 
idea  associated  by  the  world  with  a  particular  name 
and  presence  has  often  little  basis  in  the  mind  be- 
hind that  name  and  presence,  as  it  appears  to  cool 
and  impartial  study.  The  reason  is  that  the  function 
of  the  great  and  famous  man  is  to  be  a  symbol,  and 
the  real  question  in  other  minds  is  not  so  much,  What 
are  you?  as,  What  can  I  believe  that  you  are?  What 
can  you  help  me  to  feel  and  be?  How]far  can  I  use 
you  as  a  symbol  in  the  development  of  my  instinctive 
tendency?  The  scientific  historian  may  insist  on  ask- 
ing, What  are  you?  because  the  instinct  he  is  trying 
to  gratify  is  the  need  to  make  things  consistent  to  the 
intelligence.  But  few  persons  have  this  need  strongly 
developed,  in  comparison  with  those  of  a  more  emo- 
tional character;  and  so  most  will  care  more  for  the 
other  questions.  The  scientific  point  of  view  can 
never  be  that  of  the  most  of  mankind,  and  science, 
it  seems  to  me,  can  hardly  be  more  than  the  critic 
and  chastener  of  popular  faith,  not  its  leader. 

Thus  we  may  say  of  all  famous  and  admired  char- 
acters that,  as  personal  ideas,  they  partake  of  the 
nature  of  gods,  in  that  the  thought  entertained  of  them 
is  a  constructive  effort  of  the  idealizing  imagination 
seeking  to  create  a  personal  symbol  of  its  own  tendency. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  striking  illustration  of 
this  than  that  offered  by  the  mediaeval  history  of  the 
papacy.  It  is  notorious  that  the  idea  of  the  pope,  as 
it  was  entertained  by  the  religious  world,  and  the 
pope  himself,  as  he  appeared  to  his  intimates,  were 
things  having  for  the  most  part  no  close  relation  to 

341 


HUMAN   NATURE!   AND   THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

each  other.  The  visible  pope  was  often  and  for  long 
periods  at  a  time  a  depraved  or  insignificant  man; 
but  during  these  very  periods  the  ideal  pope,  the 
pope  of  Europe's  thought,  might  and  often  did  flour- 
ish and  grow  in  temporal  and  spiritual  power.  The 
former  was  only  a  symbol  for  the  better  definition  of 
what  the  world  needed  to  believe,  a  lay  figure  for  gar- 
ments woven  by  the  co-operative  imagination  of  re- 
ligious men  The  world  needed  to  believe  in  a  spiritual 
authority  as  a  young  girl  needs  to  be  in  love,  and  it 
took  up  with  the  papacy  as  the  most  available  frame- 
work for  that  belief,  just  as  the  young  girl  is  likely  to 
give  her  love  to  the  least  repugnant  of  those  who  so- 
licit it.  The  same  is  true  in  a  large  measure  of  the 
other  great  mediaeval  authority,  the  emperor,  as  Mr. 
Bryce  so  clearly  shows  in  his  history  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire;  and  it  holds  true  in  some  degree  of 
all  those  clothed  with  royalty  or  other  great  offices 
Fame  may  or  may  not  represent  what  men  were;  but 
it  always  represents  what  humanity  needs  them  to 
have  been. 

It  is  also  true  that  when  there  is  a  real  personal 
superiority,  ascendancy  is  seldom  confined  to  the 
traits  in  which  this  is  manifested,  but,  once  estab- 
lished in  regard  to  these  traits,  it  tends  to  envelop 
the  leader  as  a  whole,  and  to  produce  allegiance  to 
him  as  a  concrete  person.  This  comes,  of  course, 
from  the  difficulty  of  breaking  up  and  sifting  that 
which  presents  itself  to  the  senses,  and  through  them 
to  the  mind,  as  a  single  living  whole.  And  as  the 
faults  and  weaknesses  of  a  great  man  are  commonly 
much  easier  to  imitate  than  his  excellences,  it  often 

342 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

happens,  as  in  the  case  of  Michelangelo,  that  the 
former  are  much  more  conspicuous  in  his  followers 
than  the  latter. 

Another  phase  of  the  same  truth  is  the  ascendancy 
that  persons  of  belief  and  hope  always  exercise  as 
against  those  who  may  be  superior  in  every  other 
respect,  but  who  lack  these  traits.  The  onward  and 
aggressive  portion  of  the  world,  the  people  who  do 
things,  the  young  and  all  having  surplus  energy,  need 
to  hope  and  strive  for  an  imaginative  object,  and 
they  will  follow  no  one  who  does  not  encourage  this 
tendency.  The  first  requisite  of  a  leader  is,  not  to 
be  right,  but  to  lead,  to  show  a  way.  The  idealist's 
programme  of  political  or  economic  reform  may  be 
impracticable,  absurd,  demonstrably  ridiculous;  but 
it  can  never  be  successfully  opposed  merely  by  point- 
ing out  that  this  is  the  case.  A  negative  opposition 
cannot  be  wholly  effectual:  there  must  be  a  competing 
idealism;  something  must  be  offered  that  is  not  only 
less  objectionable  but  more  desirable,  that  affords 
occupation  to  progressive  instinct.  This  holds  true, 
for  instance,  in  the  case  of  teachers.  One  may  some- 
times observe  two  men  of  whom  one  has  a  sounder 
judgment,  a  clearer  head,  a  more  steadfast  character, 
and  is  more  a  master  of  his  subject,  than  the  other; 
yet  is  hopelessly  inferior  in  influence,  because  the  other 
has  a  streak  of  contagious  idealism  which  he  lacks. 
One  has  all  the  virtues  except  hope;  the  other  has  that 
and  all  the  power.  It  has  been  well  said  that  when  a 
man  ceases  to  learn — to  be  open  and  forward-looking 
— he  should  also  cease  to  teach. 

343 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  illustrations  of  this 
simple  but  important  truth.  All  vigorous  minds,  I 
think,  love  books  and  persons  that  are  mentally  en- 
franchising and  onward-looking,  that  seem  to  over- 
throw the  high  board  fences  of  conventional  thought 
and  show  a  distance  with  purple  hills;  while  it  would 
be  possible  to  mention  powerful  minds  that  have 
quickly  lost  influence  by  giving  too  much  the  impres- 
sion of  finality,  as  if  they  thought  their  system  was 
the  last.  They  only  build  another  board  fence  a  little 
beyond  the  old  one.  Perhaps  the  most  admirable 
and  original  thing  about  Emerson  is  the  invincible 
openness  and  renewal  that  seem  to  be  in  him,  and 
some  of  us  find  his  best  expression  in  that  address  on 
the  "Method  of  Nature"  in  which,  even  more  than 
elsewhere,  he  makes  us  feel  that  what  is  achieved  is 
ever  transitory,  and  that  there  is  everything  to  ex- 
pect from  the  future.  In  like  manner,  to  take  perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  example  of  all,  the  early  Chris- 
tians found  in  their  belief  organized  hope,  in  contrast 
to  the  organized  ennui  of  the  Roman  system  of  thought, 
and  this,  it  would  seem,  must  have  been  its  most  direct 
and  potent  appeal  to  most  minds.* 

It  is  also  because  of  this  ideal  and  imaginative  char- 
acter in  personal  ascendancy  that  mystery  enters  so 

*  The  fact  that  the  Roman  system  meant  organized  ennui  in 
thought,  the  impossibility  of  entertaining  large  and  hopeful 
views  of  life,  is  strikingly  brought  out,  by  the  aid  of  contemporary 
documents,  in  Dill's  Roman  Society.  Prisoners  of  a  shrinking 
system,  the  later  Romans  had  no  outlook  except  toward  the 
past.  Anything  onward  and  open  in  thought  was  inconceivable 
by  them. 

344 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

largely  into  it.  Our  allegiance  is  accompanied  by  a 
mental  enlargement  and  renewal  through  generative 
suggestions;  we  are  passing  from  the  familiar  to  the 
strange,  are  being  drawn  we  know  not  whither  by 
forces  never  before  experienced;  the  very  essence  of 
the  matter  is  novelty,  insecurity,  and  that  excitement 
in  the  presence  of  dim  possibilities  that  constitutes 
mystery. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  to  one  in  love  the 
beloved  person  appears  as  a  mystery,  enveloped,  as  it 
were,  in  a  sort  of  purple  cloud.  This  is  doubtless  be- 
cause the  lover  is  undergoing  strange  alteration  in 
his  own  mind;  fresh  vague  passions  are  rising  into 
consciousness  out  of  the  dark  storehouse  of  hereditary 
instinct;  he  is  cast  loose  from  his  old  anchorage  and 
does  not  know  whither  he  is  driven.  The  consequent 
feeling  of  a  power  and  a  strangeness  upon  him  he  as- 
sociates, of  course,  with  the  person — commonplace 
enough,  perhaps,  to  others — who  is  the  symbol  and 
occasion  of  the  experience.  Goethe  seems  to  mean 
something  of  this  sort  when  he  uses  the  expression  das 
ewig  Weibliche  to  suggest  the  general  mystery  and  al- 
lurement of  new  life. 

And  it  is  much  the  same  no  matter  what  sort  of 
ascendancy  is  exercised  over  us:  there  is  always  ex- 
citement and  a  feeling  of  newness  and  uncertainty; 
imagination  is  awakened  and  busies  itself  with  the 
fascinating  personality;  his  slightest  word  or  action 
is  eagerly  interpreted  and  works  upon  us.  In  short, 
mystery  and  idealism  are  so  inseparable  that  a  sense 
of  power  in  others  seems  to  involve  a  sense  of  their 

345 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

inscrutability;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  so  soon  as  a 
person  becomes  plain,  he  ceases  to  stimulate  the  im- 
agination; we  have  seen  all  around  him,  so  that  he 
no  longer  appears  an  open  door  to  new  life,  but  has 
begun  to  be  commonplace  and  stale. 

It  is  even  true  that  inscrutability  in  itself,  having 
perhaps  nothing  important  back  of  it,  plays  a  consid- 
erable part  in  personal  ascendancy.  The  hero  is  al- 
ways a  product  of  constructive  imagination;  and  just 
as  some  imaginative  painters  find  that  the  too  detailed 
observation  of  sensible  objects  cumbers  the  inner  vision 
and  impedes  production,  so  the  hero-worshipper  is 
likely  at  times  to  reject  altogether  the  persons  he  knows 
in  favor  of  some  sort  of  mask  or  lay  figure,  whose  very 
blankness  or  inertness  insures  the  great  advantage 
that  it  cannot  actively  repudiate  the  qualities  attrib- 
uted to  it:  it  offers  carte  blanche  to  the  imagination. 
As  already  suggested,  the  vital  question  in  ascendancy 
is  not,  primarily,  What  are  you?  but,  What  do  you 
enable  me  to  be?  What  self-developing  ideas  do  you 
enable  me  to  form?  and  the  power  of  mere  inscru- 
tability arises  from  the  fact  that  it  gives  a  vague  stim- 
ulus to  thought  and  then  leaves  it  to  work  out  the 
details  to  suit  itself.  To  recur  to  the  matter  of  falling 
in  love:  the  young  girl  who,  like  Gwendolen  in  Daniel 
Deronda,  or  Isabel  in  the  Portrait  of  a  Lady,  fixes 
her  passion  upon  some  self-contained  and  to  her  in- 
scrutable person,  in  preference  to  others  who  are  wor- 
thier but  less  mysterious,  is  a  common  character  in 
life  as  well  as  in  fiction. 

Many  other  illustrations  of  the  same  principle  might 
346 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

be  given.  Thus  the  fact,  instances  of  which  are  col- 
lected by  Mr.  Tylor  in  his  work  on  Primitive  Culture, 
that  the  insane,  the  idiotic,  and  the  epileptic  are  rev- 
erenced by  primitive  peoples,  may  be  interpreted  in  a 
similar  manner.*  Those  who  are  mentally  abnormal 
present  in  a  striking  form  the  inscrutable  in  person- 
ality; they  seem  to  be  men,  but  are  not  such  men  as 
we;  our  imaginations  are  alarmed  and  baffled,  so  that 
it  is  not  unnatural  that  before  science  has  shown  us 
definite  relations  between  these  persons  and  ourselves, 
they  should  serve  as  one  of  the  points  about  which 
crystallize  our  imaginations  of  unknown  power.  In 
the  same  way  a  strange  and  somewhat  impassive  physi- 
ognomy is  often,  perhaps,  an  advantage  to  an  orator, 
or  leader  of  any  sort,  because  it  helps  to  fix  the  eye 
and  fascinate  the  mind.  Such  a  countenance  as  that 
of  Savonarola  may  have  counted  for  much  toward 
the  effect  he  produced.  Another  instance  of  the  pres- 
tige of  the  inscrutable  is  the  fascination  of  silence, 
when  power  is  imagined  to  lie  behind  it.  The  very 
name  of  William  the  Silent  gives  one  a  sort  of  thrill, 
whether  he  knows  anything  of  that  distinguished  char- 
acter or  not.  One  seems  to  see  a  man  darkly  potent, 
mysteriously  dispensing  with  the  ordinary  channel  of 
self-assertion,  and  attaining  his  ends  without  evident 
means.  It  is  the  same  with  Von  Moltke,  "sclent  in 
seven  languages,"  whose  genius  humbled  France  and 
Austria  in  two  brief  campaigns.  And  General  Grant's 
taciturnity  undoubtedly  fascinated  the  imagination  of 
the  people — after  his  earlier  successes  had  shown  that 
*  See  Primitive  Culture,  by  E.  B.  Tylor,  chap.  xiv. 
347 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

there  was  really  something  in  him — and  helped  to 
secure  to  him  a  trust  and  authority  much  beyond  that 
of  any  other  of  the  Federal  generals.  It  is  the  same 
with  personal  reserve  in  every  form:  one  who  always 
appears  to  be  his  own  master  and  does  not  too  readily 
reveal  his  deeper  feelings,  is  so  much  the  more  likely 
to  create  an  impression  of  power.  He  is  formidable 
because  incalculable.  And  accordingly  we  see  that 
many  people  deliberately  assume,  or  try  to  assume, 
an  appearance  of  inscrutability, 

"And  do  a  wilful  stillness  entertain, 
With  purpose  to  be  dressed  in  an  opinion 
Of  wisdom,  gravity,  profound  conceit"; 

Disraeli,  it  is  said,  "was  a  mystery  man  by  instinct 
and  policy,"  and  we  all  know  others  in  our  own  circle 
of  acquaintances. 

So  with  the  expression  of  personality  in  literature. 
A  book  which  is  perfectly  clear  at  the  first  cursory 
reading  is  by  that  fact  condemned  as  commonplace. 
If  there  were  anything  vital  in  it,  it  would  appear  at 
least  a  little  strange,  and  would  not  be  fully  under- 
stood until  it  had  been  for  some  time  inwardly  di- 
gested. At  the  end  of  that  time  it  would  have  done 
its  best  service  for  us  and  its  ascendancy  would  have 
waned.  It  is  always  thus,  I  imagine,  with  writers  who 
strongly  move  us;  there  is  first  mystery  and  a  sense 
of  unexplored  life,  then  a  period  of  assimilative  excite- 
ment, and  after  that  chastened  affection,  or  perhaps 
revulsion  or  distrust.  A  person  of  mature  years  and 
ripe  development,  who  is  expecting  nothing  from  litera- 

348 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

ture  but  the  corroboration  and  renewal  of  past  ideas, 
may  find  satisfaction  in  a  lucidity  so  complete  as  to 
occasion  no  imaginative  excitement,  but  young  and 
ambitious  students  are  not  content  with  it.  They  seek 
the  excitement  because  they  are  capable  of  the  growth 
that  it  accompanies.  It  was  a  maxim  of  Goethe  that 
where  there  is  no  mystery  there  is  no  power;  and  some- 
thing of  the  perennial  vitality  of  his  writings  may  be 
attributed  to  the  fact  that  he  did  not  trouble  himself 
too  much  with  the  question  whether  people  would 
understand  him,  but  set  down  his  inmost  experiences 
as  adequately  as  he  could,  and  left  the  rest  to  time. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  Browning,  and  of  many  other 
great  writers. 

Something  similar  holds  true  of  power  in  plastic 
art.  The  sort  of  mystery  most  proper  and  legitimate 
in  art,  however,  is  not  an  intellectual  mystery— though 
some  artists  have  had  a  great  deal  of  that,  like 
Leonardo,  who  "conquered  by  the  magnetism  of  an 
incalculable  personality"  *— but  rather  a  sensuous 
mystery,  that  is  to  say  a  vague  and  subtle  appeal  to 
recondite  sources  of  sensuous  impression,  an  awaken- 
ing of  hitherto  unconscious  capacity  for  harmonious 
sensuous  life,  like  the  feeling  we  get  from  the  first  mild 
weather  in  the  spring.  In  this  way,  it  seems  to  me, 
there  is  an  effect  of  mystery,  of  congenial  strangeness, 
in  all  powerful  art.    Probably  every  one  would  recog- 


*  J.  A.  Symonds,  History  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy,  The 
Fine  Arts,  p.  329.  Hamerton  has  some  interesting  observations 
on  mystery  in  art  in  his  life  of  Turner,  p.  352;  also  Ruskin  in 
Modern  Painters,  part  V,  chaps.  4  and  5. 

349 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nize  this  as  true  of  music,  even  if  all  do  not  feel  its 
applicability  to  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture. 

The  well-known  fact  that  mystery  is  inseparable 
from  higher  religious  idealism  may  be  regarded  as  a 
larger  expression  of  this  same  necessity  of  associating 
inscrutability  with  personal  power.  If  the  imagination 
cannot  be  content  with  the  definite  in  lesser  instances, 
it  evidently  cannot  when  it  comes  to  form  the  com- 
pletest  image  of  personality  that  it  can  embrace. 

Although  ascendancy  depends  upon  what  we  think 
about  a  man  rather  than  what  he  is,  it  is  nevertheless 
true  that  an  impression  of  his  reality  and  good  faith 
is  of  the  first  importance,  and  this  impression  can 
hardly  outlast  close  scrutiny  unless  it  corresponds  to 
the  fact.  Hence,  as  a  rule,  the  man  who  is  to  exercise 
enduring  power  over  others  must  believe  in  that  for 
which  he  stands.  Such  belief  operates  as  a  potent 
suggestion  upon  the  minds  of  others. 

"While  thus  he  spake,  his  eye,  dwelling  on  mine, 
Drew  me,  with  power  upon  me,  till  I  grew 
One  with  him,  to  believe  as  he  believed."  * 

If  we  divine  a  discrepancy  between  a  man's  words 
and  his  character,  the  whole  impression  of  him  be- 
comes broken  and  painful;  he  revolts  the  imagination 
by  his  lack  of  unity,  and  even  the  good  in  him  is  hardly 
accepted.  Nothing,  therefore,  is  more  fatal  to  as- 
cendancy than  perceived  insincerity  or  doubt,  and 
in  immediate  intercourse  it  is  hard  to  conceal  them. 

*  Tennyson,  The  Holy  Grail. 
350 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

When  Luther  came  to  Rome  and  saw  what  kind  of  a 
man  the  Pope  was,  the  papacy  was  shaken. 

How  far  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  work  upon  others 
through  a  false  idea  of  himself  depends  upon  a  variety 
of  circumstances.  As  already  pointed  out,  the  man 
himself  may  be  a  mere  incident  with  no  definite  rela- 
tion to  the  idea  of  him,  the  latter  being  a  separate 
product  of  the  imagination.  This  can  hardly  be  except 
where  there  is  no  immediate  contact  between  leader 
and  follower,  and  partly  explains  why  authority,  espe- 
cially if  it  covers  intrinsic  personal  weakness,  has  al- 
ways a  tendency  to  surround  itself  with  forms  and 
artificial  mystery,  whose  object  is  to  prevent  familiar 
contact  and  so  give  the  imagination  a  chance  to  ideal- 
ize. Among  a  self-reliant,  practical  people  like  ours, 
with  much  shrewdness  and  little  traditional  reverence, 
the  power  of  forms  is  diminished;  but  it  is  always 
great.  The  discipline  of  armies  and  navies,  for  in- 
stance, very  distinctly  recognizes  the  necessity  of  those 
forms  which  separate  superior  from  inferior,  and  so 
help  to  establish  an  unscrutinized  ascendancy  in  the 
former.  In  the  same  way  manners,  as  Professor  Ross 
remarks  in  his  work  on  Social  Control,*  are  largely 
used  by  men  of  the  world  as  a  means  of  self-conceal- 
ment, and  this  self-concealment  serves,  among  other 
purposes,  that  of  preserving  a  sort  of  ascendancy  over 
the  unsophisticated. 

As  regards  intentional  imposture,  it  may  be  said  in 
general  that  all  men  are  subject  to  be  duped  in  mat- 
ters of  which  they  have  no  working  knowledge  and 
*  See  p.  248. 
351 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

which  appeal  strongly  to  the  emotions.  The  applica- 
tion of  this  principle  to  quack  medicine,  to  commer- 
cial swindles,  and  to  the  ever-reappearing  impostures 
relating  to  supposed  communication  with  spirits,  is 
too  plain  to  be  enlarged  upon.  While  it  is  an  advan- 
tage, even  to  a  charlatan,  to  believe  in  himself,  the 
susceptibility  of  a  large  part  of  us  to  be  duped  by 
quacks  of  one  sort  or  another  is  obvious  enough,  and 
shows  that  the  work  of  free  institutions  in  developing 
shrewdness  is  by  no  means  complete. 

Probably  a  close  and  candid  consideration  of  the 
matter  would  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  every  one  is 
something  of  an  impostor,  that  we  all  pose  more  or 
less,  under  the  impulse  to  produce  a  desired  impres- 
sion upon  others.  As  social  and  imaginative  beings 
we  must  set  store  by  our  appearance;  and  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  do  so  without  in  some  degree  adapting  that 
appearance  to  the  impression  we  wish  to  make.  It  is 
only  when  this  adaptation  takes  the  form  of  deliberate 
and  injurious  deceit  that  much  fault  can  be  found 
with  it.  "We  all,"  says  Stevenson  in  his  essay  on 
Pepys,  "whether  we  write  or  speak,  must  somewhat 
drape  oursslves  when  we  address  our  fellows;  at  a 
given  moment  we  apprehend  our  character  and  acts 
by  some  particular  side;  we  are  merry  with  one,  grave 
with  another,  as  befits  the  nature  and  demands  of  the 
relation."  If  we  never  tried  to  seem  a  little  better 
than  we  are,  how  could  we  improve  or  "train  ourselves 
from  the  outside  inward"?  And  the  same  impulse 
to  show  the  world  a  better  or  idealized  aspect  of  our- 
selves finds  an  organized  expression  in  the  various  pro- 

352 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

fessions  and  classes,  each  of  which  has  to  some  extent 
a  cant  or  pose,  which  its  members  assume  uncon- 
sciously, for  the  most  part,  but  which  has  the  effect 
of  a  conspiracy  to  work  upon  the  credulity  of  the  rest 
of  the  world.  There  is  a  cant  not  only  of  theology 
and  of  philanthropy,  but  also  of  law,  medicine,  teach- 
ing, even  of  science — perhaps  especially  of  science,  just 
now,  since  the  more  a  particular  kind  of  merit  is  recog- 
nized and  admired,  the  more  it  is  likely  to  be  assumed 
by  the  unworthy.  As  theology  goes  down  and  science 
comes  up,  the  affectation  of  disinterestedness  and  of 
exactness  in  method  tends  to  supplant  the  affectation 
of  piety. 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  imposture  is  of  con- 
siderable but  always  secondary  importance;  it  is  a 
sort  of  parasite  upon  human  idealism  and  thrives  only 
by  the  impulse  to  believe.  A  correct  intuition  on  the 
part  of  mankind  in  the  choice  of  their  leaders  is  the 
only  guaranty  of  the  effectual  organization  of  life  in 
any  or  every  sphere;  and  in  the  long  run  and  on  a 
large  scale  this  correctness  seems  to  exist.  On  the 
whole,  the  great  men  of  history  were  real  men,  not 
shams,  their  characters  were  genuinely  representative 
of  the  deeper  needs  and  tendencies  of  human  nature, 
so  that  in  following  them  men  were  truly  expressing 
themselves. 

We  have  seen  that  all  leadership  has  an  aspect  of 
sympathy  and  conformity,  as  well  as  one  of  individu- 
ality and  self-will,  so  that  every  leader  must  also  be 
a  follower,  in  the  sense  that  he  shares  the  general  cur- 

353 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

rent  of  life.  He  leads  by  appealing  to  our  own  ten- 
dency, not  by  imposing  something  external  upon  us. 
Great  men  are  therefore  the  symbols  or  expressions, 
in  a  sense,  of  the  social  conditions  under  which  they 
work,  and  if  these  conditions  were  not  favorable  the 
career  of  the  great  man  would  be  impossible. 

Does  the  leader,  then,  really  lead,  in  the  sense  that 
the  course  of  history  would  have  been  essentially  dif- 
ferent if  he  had  not  lived?  Is  the  individual  a  true 
cause,  or  would  things  have  gone  on  about  the  same 
if  the  famous  men  had  been  cut  off  in  infancy?  Is 
not  general  tendency  the  great  thing,  and  is  it  not 
bound  to  find  expression  independently  of  particular 
persons?  Certainly  many  people  have  the  impression 
that  in  an  evolutionary  view  of  life  single  individuals 
become  insignificant,  and  that  all  great  movements 
must  be  regarded  as  the  outcome  of  vast,  impersonal 
tendencies. 

If  one  accepts  the  view  of  the  relation  between  par- 
ticular individuals  and  society  as  a  whole  already  stated 
in  various  connections,  the  answer  to  these  questions 
must  be  that  the  individual  is  a  cause,  as  independent 
as  a  cause  can  be  which  is  part  of  a  living  whole,  that 
the  leader  does  lead,  and  that  the  course  of  history 
must  have  been  notably  different  if  a  few  great  men 
had  been  withdrawn  from  it. 

As  to  general  tendency,  it  is  false  to  set  it  over 
against  individuals,  as  if  it  were  a  separate  thing;  it 
is  only  through  individuals  that  general  tendency  be- 
gins or  persists.  "Impersonal  tendency"  in  society 
is  a  mere  abstraction;  there  is  no  such  thing.    Whether 

354 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

idiosyncrasy  is  such  as  we  all  have  in  some  measure, 
or  whether  it  takes  the  form  of  conspicuous  originality 
or  genius,  it  is  a  variant  element  in  life  having  always 
some  tendency  to  innovation.  Of  course,  if  we  believe 
in  the  prevalence  of  continuity  and  law,  we  cannot 
regard  it  as  a  new  creation  out  of  nothing;  it  must 
be  a  reorganization  of  hereditary  and  social  forces. 
But  however  this  may  be,  the  person  as  a  whole  is 
always  more  or  less  novel  or  innovating.  Not  one  of 
us  floats  quite  inert  upon  the  general  stream  of  ten- 
dency; we  leave  the  world  somewhat  different  from 
what  it  would  have  been  if  we  had  been  carried  off  by 
the  croup. 

Now  in  the  case  of  a  man  of  genius,  this  variant 
tendency  may  be  so  potent  as  to  reorganize  a  large 
part  of  the  general  life  in  its  image,  and  give  it  a  form 
and  direction  which  it  could  not  have  had  otherwise. 
How  any  one  can  look  at  the  facts  and  doubt  the  truth 
of  this  it  is  hard  to  see.  Would  the  life  we  receive  from 
the  last  century  have  been  the  same  if,  say,  Darwin, 
Lincoln,  and  Bismarck  had  not  lived?  Take  the  case 
of  Darwin.  No  doubt  his  greatness  depended  upon 
his  representing  and  fulfilling  an  existing  tendency, 
and  this  tendency  entered  into  him  from  his  environ- 
ment, that  is  from  other  individuals.  But  it  came  out 
of  him  no  longer  the  vague  drift  toward  evolutionary 
theory  and  experiment  that  it  was  before,  but  con- 
crete, common  sense,  matter-of-fact  knowledge,  thor- 
oughly Darwinized,  and  so  accredited  by  his  character 
and  labors  that  the  world  accepts  it  as  it  could  not 
have  done  if  he  had  not  lived.     We  may  apply  the 

355 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

same  idea  to  the  author  of  Christianity.  Whatever 
we  may  or  may  not  believe  regarding  the  nature  of 
Christ's  spiritual  leadership,  there  is,  I  take  it,  nothing 
necessarily  at  variance  with  a  sound  social  science  in 
the  Christian  theory  that  the  course  of  history  has 
been  transformed  by  his  life. 

The  vague  instincts  which  it  is  the  function  of  the 
leader  to  define,  stimulate,  and  organize,  might  have 
remained  latent  and  ineffectual,  or  might  have  de- 
veloped in  a  totally  different  manner,  if  he  had  not 
lived.  No  one  can  guess  what  the  period  following 
the  French  Revolution,  or  any  period  of  French  his- 
tory since  then,  might  have  been  without  Napoleon; 
but  it  is  apparent  that  all  would  have  been  very  dif- 
ferent. It  is  true  that  the  leader  is  always  a  symbol, 
and  can  work  only  by  using  existing  elements  of  life; 
but  in  the  peculiar  way  in  which  he  uses  those  elements 
is  causation,  is  creation,  in  the  only  sense,  perhaps,  in 
which  creation  is  definitely  conceivable.  To  deny  its 
importance  is  as  absurd  as  to  say  that  the  marble  as 
it  comes  from  the  quarry  and  the  marble  after  Michel- 
angelo is  through  with  it  are  one  and  the  same  thing. 

Most,  if  not  all,  of  our  confusion  regarding  such 
points  as  these  arises  from  the  almost  invincible  habit 
of  thinking  of  "society,"  or  "historical  tendency," 
as  a  distinct  entity  from  "individuals,"  instead  of 
remembering  that  these  general  and  particular  terms 
merely  express  different  aspects  of  the  same  concrete 
fact— human  life.  In  studying  leadership  we  may 
examine  the  human  army  one  by  one,  and  inquire  why 
certain  persons  stand  out  from  the  rest  as  captains, 

356 


LEADERSHIP  OR  PERSONAL  ASCENDANCY 

colonels,  or  generals,  and  what,  in  particular,  it  is  that 
they  have  to  do;  or,  in  studying  social  tendency,  we 
may  disregard  individuality  and  look  at  the  move- 
ments of  the  army,  or  of  its  divisions  and  regiments, 
as  if  they  were  impersonal  wholes.  But  there  is  no 
separation  in  fact:  the  leader  is  always  the  nucleus 
of  a  tendency,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  all  social  move- 
ment, closely  examined,  will  be  found  to  consist  of 
tendencies  having  such  nuclei.  It  is  never  the  case 
that  mankind  move  in  any  direction  with  an  even 
front,  but  there  are  always  those  who  go  before  and 
show  the  way. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  leadership  is  not  a  final  ex- 
planation of  anything;  but  is  simply  one  of  many 
aspects  in  which  human  life,  always  inscrutable,  may 
be  studied.  In  these  days  we  no  longer  look  for  final 
explanations,  but  are  well  content  if  we  can  get  a 
glimpse  of  things  in  process,  not  expecting  to  know 
how  they  began  or  where  they  are  to  end.  The  leader 
is  a  cause,  but,  like  all  causes  we  know  of,  he  is  also 
an  effect.  His  being,  however  original,  is  rooted  in 
the  past  of  the  race,  and  doubtless  as  susceptible  of 
explanation  as  anything  else,  if  we  could  only  get  at 
the  facts. 


357 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

THE  RIGHT  AS  THE  RATIONAL — SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THIS  VIEW — THE 
RIGHT  AS  THE  ONWARD — THE  RIGHT  AS  HABIT — RIGHT  IS  NOT 
THE  SOCIAL  AS  AGAINST  THE  INDIVIDUAL — IT  IS,  IN  A  SENSE, 
THE  SOCIAL  AS  AGAINST  THE  SENSUAL — THE  RIGHT  AS  A  SYN- 
THESIS OF  PERSONAL  INFLUENCES — PERSONAL  AUTHORITY — 
CONFESSION,  PRAYER,  PUBLICITY — TRUTH — DEPENDENCE  OF 
RIGHT  UPON  IMAGINATION — CONSCIENCE  REFLECTS  A  SOCIAL 
GROUP — IDEAL  PERSONS  AS  FACTORS  IN  CONSCIENCE — SOME 
IDEAS   OF   RIGHT   ARE    UNIVERSAL 

I  agree  with  those  moralists  who  hold  that  what 
we  judge  to  be  the  right  is  simply  the  rational,  in  a 
large  sense  of  that  word.  The  mind  is  the  theatre  of 
conflict  for  an  infinite  number  of  impulses,  variously 
originating,  among  which  it  is  ever  striving  to  pro- 
duce some  sort  of  unification  or  harmony.  This  en- 
deavor to  harmonize  or  assimilate  includes  deliberate 
reasoning,  but  is  something  much  more  general  and 
continuous  than  that.  It  is  mostly  an  unconscious  or 
subconscious  manipulation  of  the  materials  presented, 
an  unremitting  comparison  and  rearrangement  of 
i  vera,  which  ever  tends  to  organize  them  into  some 

't  of  a  whole.  The  right,  then,  is  that  which  stands 
uiis  test;  the  sanction  of  conscience  attaches  to  those 
thoughts  which,  in  the  long  run,  maintain  their  places 
as  part  of  that  orderly  whole  which  the  mental  instinct 
calls  for,  and  which  it  is  ever  working  with  more  or 

358 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

less  success  to  build  up.  That  is  right  which  presents 
itself,  after  the  mind  has  done  its  full  work  upon  the 
matter,  as  the  mentally  necessary,  which  we  cannot 
gainsay  without  breaking  up  our  mental  integrity. 

According  to  this  view  of  the  matter,  judgments  of 
right  and  wrong  are  in  no  way  isolated  or  radically 
different  in  kind  from  other  judgments.  Such  pecu- 
liarity as  they  have  seems  to  come  chiefly  from  the 
unusual  intensity  of  the  mental  conflict  that  precedes 
them.  The  slightest  scrutiny  of  experience  shows,  it 
seems  to  me,  that  the  sharp  and  absolute  distinction 
often  assumed  to  exist  between  conscience  and  other 
mental  activities  does  not  hold  good  in  life.  There 
are  gradual  transitions  from  judgments  which  no  one 
thinks  of  as  peculiarly  moral,  through  others  which 
some  would  regard  as  moral  and  others  would  not,  to 
those  which  are  universally  so  regarded;  and  likewise 
moral  feeling  or  sentiment  varies  a  good  deal  in  differ- 
ent individuals,  and  in  the  same  individual  under  dif- 
ferent conditions. 

The  class  of  judgments  which  every  one  considers 
as  moral  is  perhaps  limited  to  such  as  follow  an  excit- 
ing and  somewhat  protracted  mental  struggle,  involv- 
ing an  imaginative  weighing  of  conflicting  personal 
ideas.  A  line  of  conduct  has  to  be  chosen;  alternatives 
present  themselves,  each  of  which  is  backed  by  strong 
impulses,  among  which  are  some,  at  least,  of  sympa- 
thetic origin;  the  mind  is  intensely,  even  painfully, 
aroused,  and  when  a  decision  is  reached,  it  is  accom- 
panied by  a  somewhat  peculiar  sort  of  feeling  called 
the  sense  of  obligation,  duty,  or  right.     There  would 

359 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

be  little  agreement,  however,  as  to  what  sort  of  situa- 
tions evoke  this  feeling.  We  are  apt  to  feel  that  any 
question  in  regard  to  which  we  are  much  in  earnest  is 
a  question  of  right  and  wrong.  To  the  artist  a  con- 
sciously false  stroke  of  brush  or  chisel  is  a  moral  wrong, 
a  sin;  and  a  good  carpenter  will  suffer  remorse  if  he 
lets  a  bad  joint  go  uncorrected. 

The  fact  that  the  judgment  of  right  is  likely  to  pre- 
sent itself  to  people  of  emotional  temperament  as  an 
imagined  voice,  admonishing  them  what  they  ought 
to  do,  is  an  illustration  of  that  essentially  social  or 
interlocutory  character  of  thought,  spoken  of  in  an 
earlier  chapter.  Our  thoughts  are  always,  in  some 
sort,  imaginary  conversations;  and  when  vividly  felt 
they  are  likely  to  become  distinctly  so.  On  the  other 
hand,  people  whose  moral  life  is  calm  perceive  little 
or  no  distinction,  in  this  regard,  between  the  conclu- 
sions of  conscience  and  other  judgments. 

Of  course,  the  view  that  the  right  is  the  rational 
would  be  untrue,  if  by  rational  were  meant  merely 
the  result  of  formal  reasoning.  The  judgment  of  right 
and  the  conclusion  of  formal  thought  are  frequently 
opposed  to  each  other,  because,  I  take  it,  the  latter 
is  a  comparatively  narrow,  partial,  and  conventional 
product  of  the  mind.  The  former  is  rational  and  men- 
tally authoritative  in  a  larger  sense;  its  premises  are 
immeasurably  richer;  it  deals  with  the  whole  content 
of  life,  with  instincts  freighted  with  the  inarticulate 
conclusions  of  a  remote  past,  and  with  the  unformu- 
lated inductions  of  individual  experience.  To  set  the 
product  of  a  superficial  ratiocination  over  the  final 

360 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

output,  in  conscience,  of  our  whole  mental  being,  is  a 
kind  of  pedantry.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  there 
is  usually  an  opposition  between  the  two — they  should 
work  harmoniously  together — but  only  to  assert  that 
when  there  is,  conscience  must  be  regarded  as  of  a 
profounder  rationality. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  wrong,  the  immoral,  is,  in  a 
similar  sense,  the  irrational.  It  is  that  which,  after 
the  mind  has  done  its  full  work  upon  the  matter,  pre- 
sents itself  as  the  mentally  isolated,  the  inharmonious, 
that  which  we  cannot  follow  without  having,  in  our 
more  collected  moods,  a  sense  of  having  been  untrue 
to  ourselves,  of  having  done  ourselves  a  harm.  The 
mind  in  its  fullest  activity  is  denied  and  desecrated; 
we  are  split  in  two.  To  violate  conscience  is  to  act 
under  the  control  of  an  incomplete  and  fragmentary 
state  of  mind;  and  so  to  become  less  a  person,  to  be- 
gin to  disintegrate  and  go  to  pieces.  An  unjust  or  in- 
continent deed  produces  remorse,  apparently  because 
the  thought  of  it  will  not  lie  still  in  the  mind,  but  is  of 
such  a  nature  that  there  is  no  comfortable  place  for 
it  in  the  system  of  thought  already  established  there. 

The  question  of  right  and  wrong,  as  it  presents  it- 
self to  any  particular  mind,  is,  then,  a  question  of  the 
completest  practicable  organization  of  the  impulses 
with  which  that  mind  finds  itself  compelled  to  deal. 
The  working  out  of  the  right  conclusion  may  be  com- 
pared to  the  process  by  which  a  deliberative  body 
comes  to  a  conclusion  upon  some  momentous  public 
measure.  Time  must  be  given  for  all  the  more  impor- 
tant passions,  prejudices,  traditions,  interests,  and  the 

361 


HUMAN    NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

like,  to  be  urged  upon  the  members  with  such  cogency 
as  their  advocates  can  give  them,  and  for  attempts  to 
harmonize  these  conflicting  forces  so  that  a  measure 
can  be  framed  which  the  body  can  be  induced  to  pass. 
And  when  a  decision  is  finally  reached  there  is  a  sense 
of  relief,  the  greater  in  proportion  as  the  struggle  has 
been  severe,  and  a  tendency,  even  on  the  part  of  the 
opposition,  to  regard  the  matter  as  settled.  Those 
people  who  cannot  achieve  moral  unity,  but  have  al- 
ways a  sense  of  two  personalities  warring  within  them, 
may  be  compared  to  certain  countries  in  whose  as- 
semblies political  parties  are  so  embittered  that  they 
never  come  to  an  understanding  with  one  another. 

The  mental  process  is,  of  course,  only  the  proximate 
source  of  the  idea  of  right,  the  conflict  by  which  the 
competitive  strength  of  the  various  impulses  is  mea- 
sured, and  some  combination  of  them  achieved;  be- 
hind it  is  the  whole  history  of  the  race  and  of  the 
individual,  in  which  impulses  are  rooted.  Instinctive 
passions,  like  love,  ambition,  and  revenge;  the  momen- 
tum of  habit,  the  need  of  change,  personal  ascendencies, 
and  the  like,  all  have  their  bearing  upon  the  final  syn- 
thesis, and  must  either  be  conciliated  or  suppressed. 
Thus  in  case  of  a  strong  passion,  like  revenge  let  us 
say,  one  of  two  things  is  pretty  sure  to  happen:  either 
it  will  succeed  in  getting  its  revengeful  impulse,  more 
or  less  disguised  perhaps,  judged  as  right;  or,  if  op- 
posing ideas  prove  stronger,  revenge  will  be  kept  under 
by  the  rise  of  an  intense  feeling  of  wrong  that  associates 
itself  with  it.  If  one  observes  that  a  person  has  a  very 
vivid  sense  of  the  wrong  of  some  particular  impulse, 

362 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

one  may  usually  infer  that  he  has  had  in  some  way 
to  contend  with  it;  either  as  a  temptation  in  his  own 
mind,  or  as  injuriously  manifested  in  the  conduct  of 
others. 

The  natural  way  to  solve  a  moral  question,  when 
immediate  action  is  not  required,  is  to  let  it  lie  in  the 
mind,  turning  it  over  from  time  to  time  as  attention 
is  directed  to  it.  In  this  manner  the  new  situation 
gradually  relates  itself  to  all  the  mental  forces  having 
pertinency  to  it.  The  less  violent  but  more  persist- 
ent tendencies  connect  themselves  quietly  but  firmly 
to  recalcitrant  impulse,  enwrapping  it  like  the  fila- 
ments of  a  spider's  web,  and  bringing  it  under  dis- 
cipline. Something  of  this  sort  is  implied  in  the  rule 
of  conduct  suggested  by  Mr.  H.  R.  Marshall,  in  his 
excellent  work,  Instinct  and  Reason:  "Act  to  restrain 
the  impulses  which  demand  immediate  reaction,  in 
order  that  the  impulse  order  determined  by  the  exist- 
ence of  impulses  of  less  strength,  but  of  wider  signifi- 
cance, may  have  full  weight  in  the  guidance  of  your 
life."  * 

It  occurs  to  me,  however,  that  there  is  no  absolute 
rule  that  the  right  is  the  deliberate.  It  is  usually  so, 
because  the  danger  of  irrationality  and  disintegration 
comes,  in  most  cases,  from  the  temporary  sway  of  some 
active  impulse,  like  that  to  strike  or  use  injurious  words 
in  anger.  But  rationality  involves  decision  as  well  as 
deliberation;  and  there  are  persons  in  whom  the  im- 
pulse to  meditate  and  ponder  so  much  outweighs  the 
impulse  to  decide  and  act,  as  itself  to  endanger  the 
*See  his  "  Instinct  and  Reason,"  p.  569. 
3G3 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

unity  of  life.  Such  a  person  may  well  come  to  feel 
that  the  right  is  the  decisive.  It  seems  likely  that  in 
most  minds  the  larger  rationality,  which  gives  the 
sense  of  right,  is  the  sequel  of  much  pondering,  but  is 
definitely  achieved  in  moments  of  vivid  insight. 

The  main  significance  of  the  view  that  the  right  is 
the  rational  is  to  deny  that  there  is  any  sharp  distinc- 
tion in  kind  between  the  question  of  right  and  wrong 
and  other  mental  questions;  the  conclusion  of  con- 
science being  held  to  be  simply  a  more  comprehensive 
judgment,  reached  by  the  same  process  as  other  judg- 
ments. It  still  leaves  untouched  the  remoter  prob- 
lems, mental  and  social,  underlying  all  judgments; 
as,  for  instance,  of  the  nature  of  impulses,  of  what 
determines  their  relative  intensity  and  persistence,  of 
the  character  of  that  process  of  competition  and  as- 
similation among  them  of  which  judgments  are  the 
outcome;  and  of  the  social  order  as  determining  im- 
pulses both  indirectly,  through  its  action  upoo  heredity, 
and  directly  through  suggestion. 

And  behind  these  is  that  problem  of  problems,  to 
which  all  the  roads  of  thought  lead,  that  question  of 
organization  or  vital  process,  of  which  all  special  ques- 
tions of  society  or  of  the  mind  are  phases.  From  what- 
ever point  of  view  we  look  at  life,  we  can  see  some- 
thing going  on  which  it  is  convenient  to  call  organiza- 
tion, development,  or  the  like;  but  I  suppose  that  all 
who  have  thought  much  about  the  matter  feel  that 
we  have  only  a  vague  notion  of  what  the  fact  is  that 
lies  behind  these  words. 

364 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

I  mention  these  things  merely  to  disclaim  any  pres- 
ent attempt  to  fathom  them,  and  to  point  out  that 
the  aim  of  this  chapter  is  limited  to  some  observations 
on  the  working  of  social  or  personal  factors  in  the  par- 
ticular sort  of  organization  which  we  call  conscience 
or  moral  judgment. 

It  is  useless  to  look  for  any  other  or  higher  criterion 
of  right  than  conscience.  What  is  felt  to  be  right  is 
right;  that  is  what  the  word  means.  Any  theory  of 
right  that  should  tur-n  out  to  be  irreconcilable  with 
the  sense  of  right  must  evidently  be  judged  as  false. 
And  when  it  is  urged  that  conscience  is  variable,  we 
can  only  answer  that,  for  this  very  reason,  the  right 
cannot  be  reduced  to  a  universal  and  conclusive  for- 
mula. Like  life  in  all  its  phases,  it  is  a  progressive 
revelation  out  of  depths  we  do  not  penetrate. 

For  the  individual  considering  his  own  conduct,  his 
conscience  is  the  only  possible  moral  guide,  and  though 
it  differ  from  that  of  every  one  else,  it  is  the  only  right 
there  is  for  him;  to  violate  it  is  to  commit  moral  sui- 
cide. Speculating  more  largely  on  conduct  in  general 
he  may  find  the  right  in  some  collective  aspect  of  con- 
science, in  which  his  own  conscience  appears  as  mem- 
ber of  a  larger  whole;  and  with  reference  to  which 
certain  particular  consciences,  at  variance  with  his  own, 
like  those  of  certain  sorts  of  criminals,  may  appear  as 
degenerate  or  wrong — and  this  will  not  surprise  him, 
because  science  teaches  us  to  expect  degenerate  varia- 
tions in  all  forms  of  life.  But,  however  broad  a  view 
he  takes,  he  cannot  do  otherwise  than  refer  the  matter 
to  his  conscience;  so  that  what  /  think,  or — to  general- 

365 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ize  it — what  we  think,  must,  in  one  form  or  another, 
be  the  arbiter  of  right  and  wrong,  so  far  as  there  can  be 
any.  Other  tests  become  valid  only  in  so  far  as  con- 
science adopts  them. 

It  would  seem  that  any  scientific  study  of  the  mat- 
ter must  consist  essentially  in  investigating  the  con- 
ditions and  relations  of  concrete  right — the  when, 
where,  and  why  of  what  people  do  think  is  right.  So- 
cial or  moral  science  can  never  be  a  final  source  or 
test  of  morality;  though  it  can  reveal  facts  and  rela- 
tions which  may  help  conscience  in  making  its  au- 
thoritative judgment. 

The  view  that  the  right  is  the  rational  is  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  fact  that,  for  those  who  have  surplus 
energy,  the  right  is  the  onward.  The  impulse  to  act, 
to  become,  to  let  out  the  life  that  rises  within  from 
obscure  springs  of  power,  is  the  need  of  needs,  under- 
lying all  more  special  impulses;  and  this  onward  Trieb 
must  always  count  in  our  judgments  of  right:  it  is 
one  of  the  things  conscience  has  to  make  room  for. 
There  can  be  no  harmony  in  a  mental  life  which  denies 
expression  to  this  most  persistent  and  fundamental  of 
all  instinctive  tendencies:  and  consequently  the  equi- 
librium which  the  active  mind  seeks,  and  a  sense  of 
which  is  one  with  the  sense  of  right,  is  never  a  state 
of  rest,  but  an  equilibrium  mobile.  Our  situation  may 
be  said  to  resemble  that  of  an  acrobat  balancing  him- 
self upon  a  rolling  sphere,  and  enabled  to  stand  upright 
only  on  condition  of  moving  continually  forward.  The 
right  never  remains  precisely  the  same  two  days  in 

366 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

succession;  but  as  soon  as  any  particular  state  of  right 
is  achieved,  the  mental  centre  of  gravity  begins  to 
move  onward  and  away  from  it,  so  that  we  can  hold 
our  ground  only  by  effecting  a  new  adjustment.  Hence 
the  merely  negative  can  never  be  the  right  to  a  vigorous 
person,  or  to  a  vigorous  society,  because  the  mind  will 
not  be  content  with  anything  so  inadequate  to  its  own 
nature.  The  good  self  must  be  what  Emerson  calls  a 
"  crescive  self,"  and  the  right  must  mark  a  track  across 
the  "waste  abyss  of  possibility"  and  lead  out  the  ener- 
gies to  congenial  exertion. 

This  idea  is  nowhere,  perhaps,  more  cogently  stated 
and  illustrated  than  in  M.  Guyau's  penetrating  work, 
A  Sketch  of  Morality.  He  holds  that  the  sense  of 
duty  is,  in  one  aspect,  a  sense  of  a  power  to  do  things, 
and  that  this  power  tends  in  itself  to  create  a  sense  of 
obligation.  We  can,  therefore  we  must.  "Obligation 
is  an  internal  expansion — a  need  to  complete  our  ideas 
by  converting  them  into  action."  *  Even  pain  may 
be  sought  as  part  of  that  larger  life  which  the  growing 
mind  requires.  "Leopardi,  Heine,  or  Lenau  would 
probably  not  have  exchanged  those  hours  of  anguish 
in  which  they  composed  their  finest  songs  for  the  great- 
est possible  enjoyment.  Dante  suffered.  .  .  .  Which 
of  us  would  not  undergo  a  similar  suffering?  Some 
heart-aches  are  infinitely  sweet."  f  And  so  with  benev- 
olence and  what  is  called  self-sacrifice.  "...  char- 
ity is  but  one  with  overflowing  fecundity;   it  is  like  a 

*M.  J.  Guyau,  Esquisse  d'une  Morale  sans  Obligation  ni 
Sanction,  English  Translation,  p.  93. 
t  Idem,  p.  149. 

367 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

maternity  too  large  to  be  confined  within  the  family. 
The  mother's  breast  needs  life  eager  to  empty  it;  the 
heart  of  the  truly  humane  creature  needs  to  be  gentle 
and  helpful  to  all."  *  "The  young  man  is  full  of  en- 
thusiasm; he  is  ready  for  every  sacrifice  because,  in 
point  of  fact,  it  is  necessary  that  he  should  sacrifice 
something  of  himself — that  he  should  diminish  him- 
self to  a  certain  extent;  he  is  too  full  of  life  to  live  only 
for  himself."  f 

The  right,  then,  is  not  merely  the  repressive  dis- 
cipline with  which  we  sometimes  identify  it,  but  is 
also  something  warm,  fresh,  and  outward-looking. 
That  which  we  somewhat  vaguely  and  coldly  call  men- 
tal development  is,  when  at  its  best,  the  revelation  of 
an  expanding,  variegating,  and  beautiful  whole,  of 
which  the  right  act  is  a  harmonious  member. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  we  say  that  right  is  largely 
determined  by  habit,  we  only  emphasize  the  other 
aspect  of  that  progressive  mingling  of  continuity  with 
change,  which  we  see  in  mental  life  in  all  its  phases. 
Habit,  we  know,  makes  lines  of  less  resistance  in 
thought,  feeling,  and  action;  and  the  existence  of 
these  tracks  must  always  count  in  the  formation  of  a 
judgment  of  right,  as  of  any  other  judgment.  It  ought 
not,  apparently,  to  be  set  over  against  novel  impulses 
as  a  contrary  principle,  but  rather  thought  of  as  a 
phase  of  all  impulses,  since  novelty  always  consists, 
from  one  point  of  view,  in  a  fresh  combination  of  habits. 
It  is  much  the  same  question  as  that  of  suggestion  and 

*  Idem,  p.  87.  t  Idem,  p.  82. 

3G8 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

choice,  or  of  invention  and  imitation.  The  concrete 
fact,  the  real  thing,  in  each  case,  is  not  one  of  these  as 
against  the  other,  or  one  modified  by  the  other,  but  a 
single,  vital  act  of  which  these  are  aspects,  having  no 
separate  existence. 

Whether  a  person's  life,  in  its  moral  or  any  other 
aspect,  is  obviously  changeful,  or,  on  the  contrary, 
appears  to  be  merely  repetitive  or  habitual,  depends 
upon  whether  the  state  of  his  mind,  and  of  the  condi- 
tions about  it,  are  favorable  to  rapid  changes  in  the 
system  of  his  thought.  Thus  if  he  is  young  and  vigor- 
ous, and  if  he  has  a  natural  open-mindedness  and  keen- 
ness of  sensibility,  he  will  be  so  much  the  more  likely, 
other  things  equal,  to  incorporate  fresh  elements  of 
thought  and  make  a  new  synthesis,  instead  of  running 
on  habit.  Variety  of  life  in  the  past,  preventing  ex- 
cessive deepening  of  the  mental  ruts,  and  contact  with 
strong  and  novel  influences  in  the  present,  have  the 
same  tendency. 

The  rigidly  habitual  or  traditionary  morality  of 
savages  is  apparently  a  reflection  of  the  restriction 
and  sameness  of  their  social  life;  and  a  similar  type 
of  morals  is  found  even  in  a  complex  society,  as  in 
China,  when  the  social  system  has  become  rigid  by 
the  equilibration  of  competing  ideas.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  stir  and  change  of  the  more  active  parts  of 
our  society  make  control  by  mere  habit  impossible 
There  are  no  simple  dominant  habits;  tendencies  are 
mixed  and  conflicting,  so  that  the  person  must  either 
be  intelligently  moral  or  else  degenerate  He  must 
either  make  a  fresh  synthesis  or  have  no  synthesis  at  all. 

369 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

What  is  called  principle  appears  to  be  simply  a  habit 
of  conscience,  a  rule  formed  originally  by  a  synthesis 
of  various  impulses,  but  become  somewhat  mechanical 
and  independent  of  its  origin — as  it  is  the  nature  of 
habit  to  do.  As  the  mind  hardens  and  matures  there 
is  a  growmg  inaptitude  to  take  in  novel  and  powerful 
personal  impressions,  and  a  corresponding  ascendancy 
of  habit  and  system;  social  sentiment,  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  conduct,  partly  falls  away,  exposing  a  skele- 
ton of  moral  principles.  The  sense  of  duty  presents 
itself  less  and  less  as  a  vivid  sympathetic  impulse,  and 
more  and  more  as  a  sense  of  the  economy  and  restful- 
ness  of  a  definite  standard  of  conduct.  When  one  has 
come  to  accept  a  certain  course  as  duty  he  has  a  pleas- 
ant sense  of  relief  and  of  lifted  responsibility,  even  if 
the  course  involves  pain  and  renunciation.  It  is  like 
obedience  to  some  external  authority;  any  clear  way, 
though  it  lead  to  death,  is  mentally  preferable  to  the 
tangle  of  uncertainty. 

Actions  that  appear  memorable  or  heroic  are  seldom 
achieved  at  the  moment  of  decisive  choice,  but  are 
more  likely  to  come  after  the  habit  of  thought  which 
produces  the  action  has  become  somewhat  mechanical 
and  involuntary.  It  is  probably  a  mistake  to  imagine 
that  the  soldier  who  braves  death  in  battle,  the  fire- 
man who  enters  the  burning  building,  the  brakeman 
who  pursues  his  duty  along  the  icy  top  of  a  moving 
train,  or  the  fisherman  who  rows  away  from  his  vessel 
into  the  storm  and  mist,  is  usually  in  an  acute  state  of 
heroism.  It  is  all  in  the  day's  work;  the  act  is  part 
of  a  system  of  thought  and  conduct  which  has  become 

370 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

habitual  and  would  be  painful  to  break.  Death  is 
not  imagined  in  all  its  terrors  and  compared  with  social 
obligation;  the  case  is  far  simpler.  As  a  rule  there  is 
no  time  in  a  crisis  for  complicated  mental  operations, 
and  whether  the  choice  is  heroic  or  cowardly  it  is  sure 
to  be  simple.  If  there  is  any  conflict  of  suggestions  it 
is  brief,  and  the  one  that  gains  ascendancy  is  likely  to 
be  followed  mechanically,  without  calculation  of  the 
future. 

One  who  studies  the  "sense  of  oughtness"  in  chil- 
dren will  have  no  difficulty  in  seeing  that  it  springs 
largely  from  a  reluctance  to  break  habits,  an  indispo- 
sition, that  is,  to  get  out  of  mental  ruts.  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  the  mind  to  seek  a  principle  or  unifying 
thought — the  mind  is  a  rule-demanding  instinct — and 
in  great  part  this  need  is  met  by  a  habit  of  thought, 
inculcated  perhaps  by  some  older  person  who  pro- 
claims and  enforces  the  rule,  or  perhaps  by  the  unin- 
tended pressure  of  conditions  which  emphasize  one 
suggestion  and  shut  out  others.  However  the  rule 
originates,  it  meets  a  mental  want,  and,  if  not  too 
strongly  opposed  by  other  impulses,  is  likely  to  be 
adopted  and  felt  as  obligatory  just  because  it  is  a  con- 
sistent way  of  thinking.  As  Mr.  Sully  says,  "The 
truth  is  that  children  have  a  tremendous  belief  in 
law."  * 

The  books  on  child-study  give  many  instances  of 

the  surprising  allegiance  which  children  often  give  to 

rule,  merely  as  rule,  and  even  an  intermittent  observer 

will  be  sure  to  corroborate  them.     Thus  a  child  five 

*  Studies  of  Childhood,  p.  284. 

371 


HUMAN   NATURE   AND   THE   SOCIAL  ORDER 

years  old,  when  on  a  visit,  was  invited  to  "open  his 
mouth  and  shut  his  eyes,"  and  upon  his  doing  so  a 
piece  of  candy  was  put  into  the  former.  When  he 
tasted  it  he  pulled  it  out  and  exclaimed,  "Mama 
don't  want  me  to  have  candy."  Now  this  did  not 
seem  to  be  affectation,  nor  was  the  child  other  than 
fond  of  sweets,  nor  afraid  of  punishment  or  blame; 
he  was  simply  under  the  control  of  a  need  for  mental 
consistency.  The  no-candy  rule  had  been  promul- 
gated and  enforced  at  home;  he  had  adopted  it  as 
part  of  hi?  system  of  thought,  and,  when  it  was  broken, 
his  moral  sense,  otherwise  the  harmony  of  his  mind, 
was  shocked  to  a  degree  that  the  sweet  taste  of  the 
candy  could  nor  overcome.  Again,  R.  was  subjected 
nearly  every  evening  for  several  years  to  a  somewhat 
painful  operation  called  "bending  his  foot,"  intended 
to  cowect  a  slight  deformity.  After  becoming  accus- 
tomed to  this  he  would  sometimes  protest  and  even 
cry  if  it  were  proposed  to  omit  it.  I  thought  I  could 
see  that  moral  allegiance  to  a  rule,  merely  as  such, 
weakened  as  he  grew  older;  and  the  explanation  of 
this  I  took  to  be  that  the  increasing  competition  of 
suggestions  and  conflict  of  precepts  made  this  simple, 
mechanical  unity  impossible,  and  so  forced  the  mind, 
still  striving  for  harmony,  to  exert  its  higher  organiz- 
ing activity  and  attempt  a  larger  sort  of  unification. 
It  is  the  same  principle  as  that  which  prevents  the 
civilized  man  from  retaining  the  simple  allegiance  to 
rule  and  habit  that  the  savage  has;  his  complex  life 
cannot  be  unified  in  this  way,  any  more  than  his  ac- 
counts can  be  notched  on  a  stick;   and  he  is  forced,  if 

372 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

he  is  to  achieve  any  unity  of  life,  to  seek  it  in  some 
more  elaborate  standard  of  behavior.  Under  uniform 
conditions  the  habitual  is  the  rational,  and  therefore 
the  moral;  but  under  complex  conditions  this  ceases 
to  be  the  case. 

Of  course  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  does 
not  do  away  with  all  the  difficulties  involved  in  it, 
but  does,  it  seems  to  me,  put  habitual  and  other  mo- 
rality on  the  common  ground  of  rationality,  and  show 
the  apparently  sharp  division  between  them  to  be  an 
illusion. 

Those  who  think  as  I  do  will  reject  the  opinion  that 
the  right  is,  in  any  general  sense,  the  social  as  opposed 
to  the  individual.  As  already  stated,  I  look  upon  this 
antithesis  as  false  when  used  to  imply  a  radical  opposi- 
tion. All  our  human  thought  and  activity  is  either 
individual  or  social,  according  to  how  you  look  at  it, 
the  two  being  no  more  than  phases  of  the  same  thing, 
which  common  thought,  always  inclined  to  confuse 
words  with  things,  attempts  to  separate.  This  is  as 
true  in  the  ethical  field  as  in  any  other.  The  consid- 
eration of  other  persons  usually  enters  largely  into 
questions  of  right  and  wrong;  but  the  ethical  decision 
is  distinctly  an  assertion  of  a  ppivate,  individualized 
view  of  the  matter.  Surely  there  is  no  sound  general 
principle  in  accordance  with  which  the  right  is  repre- 
sented by  the  suggestions  of  the  social  environment, 
and  the  wrong  by  our  more  private  impulses. 

The  right  is  always  a  private  impulse,  always  a  self- 
assertion,   with  no  prejudice,   however,   to  its  social 

373 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

character.  The  "ethical  self"  is  not  less  a  self  for 
being  ethical,  but  if  anything  more  of  a  self,  because 
it  is  a  fuller,  more  highly  organized  expression  of  per- 
sonality. All  will  recognize,  I  imagine,  that  a  strong 
sense  of  duty  involves  self-feeling,  so  that  we  say  to 
ourselves  emphatically  I  ought.  It  would  be  no  sense 
of  duty  at  all  if  we  did  not  feel  that  there  was  some- 
thing about  it  peculiar  to  us  and  antithetical  to  some 
of  the  influences  acting  upon  us.  It  is  important  for 
many  purposes  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  ethical 
self  is  always  a  public  self;  but  it  is  equally  true  and 
important  that  it  is  always  a  private  self. 

In  short,  ethical  thinking  and  feeling,  like  all  our 
higher  life,  has  its  individual  and  social  aspects,  with 
no  peculiar  emphasis  on  either.  If  the  social  aspect 
is  here  at  its  highest,  so  also  is  the  individual  as- 
pect. 

The  same  objection  applies  to  any  form  of  the  an- 
tithesis self  versus  other,  considered  as  a  general  state- 
ment of  moral  situations.  It  is  a  fallacious  one,  in- 
volving vague  and  material  notions  of  what  person- 
ality is — vague  because  material,  for  we  cannot,  I 
think,  reflect  closely  upon  the  facts  of  personality  with- 
out seeing  that  they  are  primarily  mental  or  spiritual, 
and  by  no  means  even  analogous  to  the  more  obvious 
aspects  of  the  physical.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  ego  and 
alter,  self  and  sympathy,  are  correlative,  and  always 
mingled  in  ethical  judgments,  which  are  not  distin- 
guished by  having  less  self  and  more  other  in  them, 
but  by  being  a  completer  synthesis  of  all  pertinent 
impulses.    The  characteristic  of  a  sense  of  right  is  not 

374 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

ego  or  alter,  individual  or  social,  but  mental  unifica- 
tion, and  the  peculiar  feeling  that  accompanies  it. 

Egoism  can  be  identified  with  wrong  only  when  we 
mean  by  it  some  narrow  or  unstable  phase  of  the  self; 
and  altruism,  if  we  take  it  to  mean  susceptibility  to  be 
impressed  by  other  people,  is  equally  wrong  when  it, 
in  turn,  becomes  narrow  or  unstable,  as  we  see  it  in 
hysterical  persons.  As  I  have  already  said,  I  hold 
altruism,  when  used,  as  it  seems  to  be  ordinarily,  to 
denote  a  supposed  peculiar  class  of  impulses,  separate 
from  another  supposed  class  called  egoistic,  to  be  a 
mere  fiction,  engendered  by  the  vaguely  material  idea 
of  personality  just  mentioned.  Most  higher  kinds  of 
thought  are  altruistic,  in  the  sense  that  they  involve 
a  more  or  less  distinct  reference  to  other  persons;  but 
when  intensely  conceived,  these  same  kinds  of  thought 
are  usually,  if  not  always,  self-thoughts,  or  egoistic, 
as  well. 

The  question  whether  a  man  shall  keep  his  dollar 
or  give  it  to  a  beggar,  for  example,  looks  at  first  sight 
like  a  question  of  ego  versus  alter,  because  there  are 
two  physical  bodies  present  and  visibly  associated  with 
the  conflicting  impulses.  In  this  merely  physical 
sense,  of  referring  to  one  material  body  rather  than 
another,  it  is  in  fact  such  a  question,  but  not  necessa- 
rily in  any  properly  mental,  social,  or  moral  sense. 

Let  us  look  at  the  matter  a  moment  with  reference 
to  various  possible  meanings  of  the  words  altruism  and 
altruistic.  Taking  the  latter  word  as  the  most  con- 
venient for  our  purpose,  I  can  think  of  three  meanings, 
any  one  of  which  would  answer  well  enough  to  the 

375 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

vague  current  usage  of  it :  first,  that  which  is  suggested 
by  another  person,  that  is  by  his  appearance,  words, 
or  other  symbols;  second,  that  which  is  for  the  benefit 
of  another;  third,  good  or  moral. 

In  the  first  sense,  which  carries  no  moral  implica- 
tion at  all,  it  is  altruistic  to  give  to  the  beggar,  but  the 
word  is  also  applicable  to  the  greater  part  of  our  ac- 
tions, since  most  of  them  are  suggested  by  others  in 
some  way.  And,  of  course,  many  of  the  actions  in- 
cluded are  what  are  generally  called  selfish  ones.  To 
strike  a  man  with  whom  we  are  angry,  to  steal  from 
one  of  whom  we  are  envious,  to  take  liberties  with  an 
attractive  woman,  and  all  sorts  of  reprehensible  pro- 
ceedings suggested  by  the  sight  of  another  person, 
would  be  altruistic  in  this  sense,  which  I  suppose, 
therefore,  cannot  be  the  one  intended  by  those  who  use 
the  word  as  the  antithesis  to  egoistic. 

If  we  use  the  word  in  the  second  sense,  that  of  being 
for  the  benefit  of  another,  to  give  to  the  beggar  may 
or  may  not  be  altruistic;  thoughtful  philanthropy  is 
inclined  to  say  that  it  is  usually  for  his  harm.  It  may, 
perhaps,  be  said  that  we  at  least  intend  to  benefit  or 
please  him,  that  this  is  the  main  thing,  and  that  it  is  a 
question  whether  the  action  has  an  I-reference  or  a 
you-reference  in  the  mind  of  the  actor.  As  to  this  I 
would  again  call  attention  to  what  was  said  of  the  na- 
ture of  I  and  you  as  personal  ideas  in  Chapter  III,  and 
of  the  nature  of  egotism  in  Chapter  VI.  Our  impulses 
regarding  persons  cannot,  in  my  opinion,  be  classified 
in  this  way.  What  could  be  more  selfish  than  the  ac- 
tion of  a  mother  who  cannot  refuse  her  child  indigest- 

376 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

ible  sweetmeats?  She  gives  them  both  to  please  the 
child  and  to  gratify  a  shallow  self  which  is  identified 
with  him.  To  refuse  the  money  to  the  beggar  may  be 
as  altruistic,  in  the  sense  of  springing  from  the  desire 
to  benefit  others,  as  to  give  it.  The  self  for  which  one 
wishes  to  keep  the  dollar  is  doubtless  a  social  self  of 
some  sort,  and  very  possibly  has  better  social  claims 
upon  him  than  the  beggar:  he  may  wish  to  buy  flow- 
ers for  a  sick  child. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  to  give  the  money  is  not 
necessarily  the  moral  course.  The  attempt  to  iden- 
tify the  good  with  what  refers  to  others  as  against 
what  refers  to  one's  self  is  hopelessly  confusing  and 
false,  both  theoretically  and  in  practical  application. 

In  short,  it  is  hard  to  discover,  in  the  word  altruism, 
any  definite  moral  significance. 

The  individual  and  the  group  are  related  in  respect 
to  moral  thought  quite  as  they  are  everywhere  else; 
individual  consciences  and  the  social  conscience  are  not 
separate  things,  but  aspects  of  one  thing,  namely,  the 
moral  Life,  which  may  be  regarded  as  individual  by 
fixing  our  attention  upon  a  particular  conscience  in 
artificial  isolation,  or  as  general,  by  attending  to  some 
collective  phase,  like  public  opinion  upon  a  moral 
question.  Suppose,  for  instance,  one  were  a  member 
of  the  Congress  that  voted  the  measure  which  brought 
on  the  war  with  Spain.  The  question  how  he  should 
vote  on  this  measure  would  be,  in  its  individual  aspect, 
a  matter  of  private  conscience;  and  so  with  all  other 
members.  But  taking  the  vote  as  a  whole,  as  a  syn- 
thesis, showing  the  moral  drift  of  the  group,  it  appears 

377 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

as  an  expression  of  a  social  conscience.  The  separa- 
tion is  purely  artificial,  every  judgment  of  an  individual 
conscience  being  social  in  that  it  involves  a  synthesis 
of  social  influences,  and  every  social  conscience  being 
a  collective  view  of  individual  consciences.  The  con- 
crete thing,  the  moral  Life,  is  a  whole  made  up  of  dif- 
ferentiated members.  If  this  is  at  all  hard  to  grasp,  it  is 
only  because  the  fact  is  a  large  one.  We  certainly  can- 
not get  far  unless  we  can  learn  to  see  organization,  since 
all  our  facts  present  it. 

The  idea  that  the  right  is  the  social  as  opposed  to 
the  sensual  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  sound  one,  if  we  mean 
by  it  that  the  mentally  higher,  more  personal,  or  imagi- 
native impulses  have  on  the  whole  far  more  weight  in 
conscience  than  the  more  sensual.  The  immediate  rea- 
son for  this  seems  to  be  that  the  mind  of  one  who  shares 
the  higher  life  is  so  thronged  with  vivid  personal  or 
social  sentiments,  that  the  merely  sensual  cannot  be  the 
rational  except  where  it  is  allied  with  these,  or  at  any 
rate  not  opposed  to  them.  It  is  for  the  psychologist  to 
explain  the  mental  processes  involved,  but  apparently 
the  social  interests  prevail  in  conscience  over  the  sen- 
sual because  they  are  the  major  force;  that  is,  they  are, 
on  the  whole,  so  much  more  numerous,  vivid,  and  per- 
sistent, that  they  determine  the  general  system  of 
thought,  of  which  conscience  is  the  fullest  expression. 

We  may,  perhaps,  represent  the  matter  nearly 
enough  for  our  purpose  by  comparing  the  higher  and 
lower  kinds  of  thought  to  the  human  race  and  the  in- 
ferior animals.    The  former  is  so  much  more  powerful, 

378 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

on  the  whole,  though  not  always  so  individually,  that 
it  determines,  in  all  settled  countries,  the  general 
organization  of  life,  erecting  cities  and  railroads,  clear- 
ing forests,  and  the  like,  to  suit  itself,  and  with  only 
incidental  regard  to  other  animals.  The  latter  are  pre- 
served within  the  system  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  use- 
ful, or  at  any  rate  not  very  troublesome,  to  mankind. 
So  all  sensual  impulses  are  judged  by  their  relation  to 
a  system  of  thought  dominated  by  social  sentiment. 
The  pleasures  of  eating,  harmless  in  themselves,  begin 
to  be  judged  wrong  so  soon  as  they  are  indulged  in 
such  a  way  as  to  blunt  the  higher  faculties,  or  to  vio- 
late justice,  decency,  or  the  like.  A  shipwrecked  man, 
it  is  felt,  should  rather  perish  of  hunger  than  kill  and 
eat  another  man,  because  the  latter  action  violates  the 
whole  system  of  social  thought.  And  in  like  manner 
it  is  held  that  a  soldier,  or  indeed  any  man,  should  pre- 
fer honor  and  duty  to  life' itself. 

The  working  of  personal  influence  upon  our  judg- 
ments of  right  is  not  different  in  kind  from  its  working 
upon  other  judgments:  it  simply  introduces  vivid  im- 
pulses, which  affect  the  moral  synthesis  something  in 
the  way  that  picking  up  a  weight  will  change  one's  cen- 
tre of  gravity  and  force  him  to  alter  his  footing. 

As  was  suggested  above,  the  morality  of  mere  rule 
and  habit  becomes  the  less  conspicuous  in  the  life  of 
children  the  more  they  are  subjected  to  fresh  personal 
influences.  If  their  sympathies  are  somewhat  dull,  or 
if  they  are  secluded,  their  minds  naturally  become 
grooved;  and  all  children,  perhaps,  become  much  bound 

379 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

to  habit  in  matters  where  personal  influence  is  not 
likely  to  interfere.  But  in  most  children,  anAin  most 
matters,  it  will  be  found  that  the  moral  judgment  and 
feeling  are,  from  the  very  earliest,  intensely  sym- 
pathetic and  personal,  charged  with  shame,  affection, 
anger,  jealousy,  and  desire  to  please.  The  mind  has 
already  to  struggle  for  harmony  among  vivid  emotions, 
aroused  by  the  appeals  of  life  to  hereditary  instinct, 
each  giving  intensity  to  certain  ideas  of  conduct,  and 
tending  to  sway  the  judgment  of  right  in  their  sense. 

If  the  boy  who  refused  the  candy,  as  mentioned 
above,  had  possessed  a  vivid  imagination  of  personal 
attitudes,  which  he  did  not,  his  situation  might  have 
been  much  more  intricate.  He  might  have  been  drawn 
to  accept  it  not  only  by  the  sweet  taste  but  by  a  desire 
to  please  the  friends  who  offered  it;  and  on  the  other 
hand  he  might  have  been  deterred  by  a  vision  of  the 
reproving  face  and  voice  of  his  mother.  Thus  M., 
nearly  sixteen  months  old,  had  been  frowned  at  and 
called  naughty  in  a  severe  tone  of  voice  when  she  tried 
to  claw  her  brother's  face.  Shortly  after,  while  sitting 
with  him  on  the  bed,  her  mother  being  at  a  distance, 
she  was  observed  to  repeat  the  offense  and  then,  with- 
out further  cause  or  suggestion,  to  bow  her  head  and 
look  abashed  and  guilty.  Apparently  she  had  a  sense 
of  wrong,  a  conviction  of  sin,  perhaps  consisting  only  in 
a  reminiscence  of  the  shame  she  had  previously  felt 
when  similar  behavior  was  followed  by  rebuke. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  simple  manifestation  of  a 
moral  force  that  acts  upon  every  one  of  us  in  countless 
ways,  and  every  day  of  his  life — the  imagined  approval 

380 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

or  disapproval  of  others,  appealing  to  instinctive  emo- 
tion, and  giving  the  force  of  that  emotion  to  certain 
views  of  conduct.  The  behavior  that  connects  itself 
with  such  social  sentiment  as  we  like  and  feel  the  im- 
pulse to  continue,  is  so  much  the  more  likely  to  be 
judged  as  right;  but  if  the  sentiment  is  one  from  which 
we  are  averse,  the  behavior  is  the  more  likely  to  be 
judged  as  wrong.  The  child's  moral  sense,  says  Perez, 
"begins  as  soon  as  he  understands  the  signification  of 
certain  intonations  of  the  voice,  of  certain  attitudes,  of 
a  certain  expression  of  countenance,  intended  to  rep- 
rimand him  for  what  he  has  done  or  to  warn  him  against 
something  he  was  on  the  point  of  doing.  This  penal 
and  remunerative  sanction  gives  rise  by  degrees  to  a 
clear  distinction  of  concrete  good  and  evil."  * 

A  child  who  is  not  sensitive  to  praise  or  blame,  but 
whose  interests  are  chiefly  impersonal,  or  at  any  rate 
only  indirectly  personal,  sometimes  appears  to  have 
no  moral  sense  at  all,  to  be  without  the  conviction  of 
sin  or  any  notion  of  personal  wrong.  He  has  little  ex- 
perience of  those  peculiarly  acute  and  trying  men- 
tal crises  which  result  from  the  conflict  of  impulses  of 
sympathetic  origin  with  one  another  or  with  animal 
appetites.  This  was  much  the  case  with  R.  in  his  earli- 
est years.  Living  in  quiet  surroundings,  somewhat  iso- 
lated from  other  children,  with  no  violent  or  particu- 
larly mischievous  impulses,  occupied  all  day  long  with 
blocks,  sand-pile,  and  other  impersonal  interests,  not 
sensitive  to  blame  nor  inclined  to  take  it  seriously,  he 
gave  the  impression  of  being  non-moral,  an  unfallen 
*  See  his  First  Three  Years  of  Childhood,  p.  287. 
381 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

spirit.  M.  was  the  very  opposite  of  all  this.  From  the 
first  week  she  was  visibly  impulsive,  contentious,  sen- 
sitive, sympathetic;  laying  traps  for  approval,  rebell- 
ing against  criticism,  sudden  and  quick  to  anger,  sin- 
ning, repenting,  rejoicing;  living  almost  altogether  in  a 
vivid  personal  world. 

A  character  of  the  latter  sort  has  an  intenser  moral 
life,  because  the  variety  of  strong  impulses  introduced 
by  a  sensitive  and  personally  imaginative  tempera- 
ment are  sure  to  make  crises  for  the  mind  to  wrestle 
with.  The  ethics  of  personal  feeling  which  it  has  to 
work  out  seems  widely  apart  from  the  ethics  of  rule  and 
habit,  as  in  fact  it  is,  so  far  as  regards  the  materials 
that  enter  into  the  moral  synthesis.  The  color  and 
content,  all  the  concrete  elements  of  the  moral  life, 
are  as  different  as  are  the  different  characters  of  peo- 
ple :  the  idea  of  right  is  not  a  fraction  of  thought  alike  in 
all  minds,  but  a  comprehensive,  integrating  state  of 
mind,  characteristic  of  the  personality  of  which  it  is  an 
expression. 

The  idea  of  justice  is,  of  course,  a  phase  of  the  idea 
of  right,  and  arises  out  of  the  mental  attempt  to  recon- 
cile conflicting  impulses.  .As  Professor  Baldwin  points 
out,  the  child  is  puzzled  by  contradictions  between  his 
simpler  impulses,  such  as  those  to  appropriate  food  and 
playthings,  and  other  impulses  of  more  imaginative  or 
sympathetic  origin.  Needing  to  allay  this  conflict  he 
readily  grasps  the  notion  of  a  tertium  quid,  a  reconciling 
rule  or  law  which  helps  him  to  do  so. 

Our  mature  life  is  not  radically  distinguished  from 
childhood  as  regards  the  working  of  personal  influence 

382 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

upon  our  moral  thought.  If  there  is  progress  it  is  in 
the  way  of  fulness  of  experience  and  better  organiza- 
tion: the  mental  life  may  become  richer  in  those  sym- 
pathetic or  imaginative  impulses  which  we  derive  from 
healthy  intercourse  with  the  world,  and  without  a  good 
store  of  which  our  judgments  of  right  must  be  narrow 
and  distorted;  there  may  at  the  same  time  be  a  com- 
pleter ordering  and  discipline  of  these  materials,  a 
greater  power  to  construct  the  right,  the  unifying 
thought,  out  of  diverse  elements,  a  quicker  recognition 
of  it  when  achieved,  and  a  steadier  disposition  to  act 
upon  it.  In  most  cases,  perhaps,  a  person  after  thirty 
years  of  age  gains  something  in  the  promptness  and 
steadfastness  of  his  moral  judgment,  and  loses  some- 
thing in  the  imaginative  breadth  of  his  premises.  But 
the  process  remains  the  same,  and  our  view  of  right  is 
still  a  sort  of  microcosm  of  our  whole  character.  What- 
ever characteristic  passions  we  have  will  in  some  way 
be  represented  in  it,  and  until  we  stiffen  into  mental 
rigidity  and  decline,  it  will  change  more  or  less  with 
every  important  change  in  our  social  surroundings. 

To  a  very  large  class  of  minds,  perhaps  to  the  larg- 
est class,  the  notion  of  right  presents  itself  chiefly  as  a 
matter  of  personal  authority.  That  is,  what  we  feel 
we  ought  to  do  is  simply  what  we  imagine  our  guide 
or  master  would  do,  or  would  wish  us  to  do.  This,  for 
instance,  is  the  idea  very  largely  inculcated  and  prac- 
tised by  the  Christian  church.  It  is  not  anything  op- 
posed to  or  different  from  the  right  as  a  mental  syn- 
thesis, but  simply  means  that  admiration,  reverence,  or 

383 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

some  other  strong  sentiment,  gives  such  overwhelming 
force  to  the  suggestions  of  a  certain  example,  that  they 
more  or  less  completely  dominate  the  mind.  The  au- 
thority works  through  conscience  and  not  outside  of  it. 
Moreover,  the  relation  is  not  so  one-sided  as  it  would 
seem,  since  our  guide  is  always,  in  one  point  of  view, 
the  creation  of  our  own  imaginations,  which  are  sure  to 
interpret  him  in  a  manner  congenial  to  our  native  ten- 
dency. Thus  the  Christ  of  Fra  Angelico  is  one  thing, 
and  the  Christ  of  Michelangelo,  directing  the  ruin  of 
the  damned,  is  quite  another. 

The  ascendancy  of  personal  authority  is  usually 
greater  in  proportion  as  the  mind  is  of  a  simple,  visu- 
ally imaginative,  rather  than  reflective  turn.  People 
of  the  sort  commonly  called  "emotional,"  with  ready 
and  vivid  personal  feeling  but  little  constructive  power, 
are  likely  to  yield  to  an  ascendant  influence  as  a  whole, 
with  little  selection  or  reconstruction.  Their  individu- 
ality is  expressed  chiefly  in  the  choice  of  a  master ;  hav- 
ing chosen,  they  are  all  his.  If  they  change  masters 
they  change  morals  at  the  same  time.  The  mental 
unity  of  which  they,  like  all  the  rest  of  us,  are  in  search, 
is  found  in  allegiance  to  a  concrete  personality,  which 
saves  them  the  impossible  task  of  abstract  thought. 
Such  people,  however,  usually  feel  an  attraction  to- 
ward stability  in  others,  and  secure  it  for  themselves 
by  selecting  a  steadfast  personality  to  anchor  their 
imaginations  to. 

This,  of  course,  is  possible  or  congenial  only  to  those 
who  lack  the  mental  vigor  to  make  in  a  more  intel- 
lectual manner  that  synthesis  of  which  moral  judgment 

384 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

is  the  expression.  Those  who  have  this  vigor  make 
use  of  many  examples,  and  if  they  acknowledge  the 
pre-eminence  of  any  one,  he  is  likely  to  be  vaguely  con- 
ceived and  to  be  in  reality  no  more  than  the  symbol  of 
their  own  moral  conclusions. 

The  immediate  power  of  personal  images  or  influ- 
ences over  our  sense  of  right  is  probably  greater  in  all 
of  us  than  we  realize.  "It  is  wonderful,"  says  George 
Eliot  in  Middtemarch,  "how  much  uglier  things  will 
look  when  we  only  think  we  are  blamed  for  them  .  .  . 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  astonishing  how  pleas- 
antly conscience  takes  our  encroachments  on  those 
who  never  complain,  or  have  nobody  to  complain  for 
them."  That  is  to  say,  other  persons,  by  awaking 
social  self-feeling  in  us,  give  life  and  power  to  certain 
sentiments  of  approval  or  disapproval  regarding  our 
own  actions.  The  rule,  already  suggested,  that  the 
self  of  a  sensitive  person,  in  the  presence  of  an  ascen- 
dant personality,  tends  to  become  his  interpretation  of 
what  the  other  thinks  of  him,  is  a  prime  factor  in  de- 
termining the  moral  judgments  of  all  of  us.  Every  one 
must  have  felt  the  moral  renewal  that  comes  with  the 
mere  presence  of  one  who  is  vigorously  good,  whose 
being  enlivens  our  aspiration  and  shames  our  back- 
sliding, who  makes  us  really  feel  the  desirability  of  the 
higher  life  and  the  baseness  and  dulness  of  the  lower. 

In  one  of  Mr.  Theodore  Child's  papers  on  French 
art  he  relates  that  Dagnan  said  after  the  death  of 
Bastien-Lepage,  "With  every  new  picture  I  paint  in 
future  I  shall  try  to  think  if  he  would  have  been  satis- 
fied with  it."     Almost  the  same  has  been  said  by  an 

385 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

American  author  with  reference  to  Robert  Louis  Ste- 
venson. And  these  instances  are  typical  of  the  general 
fact  that  our  higher  selves,  our  distinctively  right  views 
and  choices,  are  dependent  upon  imaginative  realiza- 
tion of  the  points  of  view  of  other  persons.  There  is, 
I  think,  no  possibility  of  being  good  without  living, 
imaginatively  of  course,  in  good  company;  and  those 
who  uphold  the  moral  power  of  personal  example  as 
against  that  of  abstract  thought  are  certainly  in  the 
right.  A  mental  crisis,  by  its  very  difficulty,  is  likely 
to  call  up  the  thought  of  some  person  we  have  been 
used  to  look  to  as  a  guide,  and  the  confronting  of  the 
two  ideas,  that  of  the  person  and  that  of  the  problem, 
compels  us  to  answer  the  question,  What  would  he  have 
thought  of  it?  The  guide  we  appeal  to  may  be  a  per- 
son in  the  room,  or  a  distant  friend,  or  an  author  whom 
we  have  never  seen,  or  an  ideal  person  of  religion.  The 
strong,  good  men  we  have  once  imagined  live  in  our 
minds  and  fortify  there  the  idea  of  worthiness.  They 
were  free  and  noble  and  make  us  unhappy  to  be  less. 

Of  course  the  influence  of  other  persons  often  goes 
by  contraries.  The  thought  of  one  who  is  repugnant 
to  us  brings  a  strong  sense  of  the  wrong  of  that  for 
which  he  stands,  and  our  conviction  of  the  hateful- 
ness  of  any  ill  trait  is  much  enlivened  by  intimate 
contact  with  one  who  exhibits  it. 

The  moral  potency  of  confession,  and  of  all  sorts 
of  publicity,  rests  upon  the  same  basis.  In  opening 
ourselves  to  another  we  are  impelled  to  imagine  how 
our  conduct  appears  to  him;   we  take  an  outside  view 

386 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

of  ourselves.  It  makes  a  great  difference  to  whom  we 
confess:  the  higher  the  character  of  the  person  whose 
mind  we  imagine,  the  more  enlightening  and  elevating 
is  the  view  of  ourselves  that  we  get.  Even  to  write 
our  thoughts  in  a  diary,  and  so  to  confess,  not  to  a 
particular  person,  but  to  that  vague  image  of  an  inter- 
locutor that  connects  itself  with  all  articulate  expres- 
sion, makes  things  look  different. 

It  is,  perhaps,  much  the  same  with  prayer.  To  pray, 
in  a  higher  sense,  is  to  confront  our  moral  perplexities 
with  the  highest  personal  ideal  we  can  form,  and  so 
to  be  unconsciously  integrating  the  two,  straightening 
out  the  one  in  accordance  with  the  other.  It  would 
seem  that  social  psychology  strongly  corroborates  the 
idea  that  prayer  is  an  essential  aspect  of  the  higher 
life;  by  showing,  I  mean,  that  thought,  and  especially 
vivid  thought,  is  interlocutory  in  its  very  nature,  and 
that  aspiration  almost  necessarily  takes,  more  or  less 
distinctly,  the  form  of  intercourse  with  an  ideal  being. 

Whatever  publishes  our  conduct  introduces  new 
and  strong  factors  into  conscience;  but  whether  this 
publicity  is  wholesome  or  otherwise  depends  upon  the 
character  of  the  public;  or,  more  definitely,  upon 
whether  the  idea  of  ourselves  that  we  impute  to  this 
public  is  edifying  or  degrading.  In  many  cases,  for 
instance,  it  is  ruinous  to  a  person's  character  to  be 
publicly  disgraced,  because  he,  or  she,  presently  ac- 
cepts the  degrading  self  that  seems  to  exist  in  the  minds 
of  others.  There  are  some  people  to  whom  we  should 
be  ashamed  to  confess  our  sins,  and  others,  perhaps, 
to  whom  we  should  not  like  to  own  our  virtues.    Cer- 

387 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tainly  it  should  not  be  assumed  that  it  is  good  for  us 
to  have  our  acts  displayed  before  the  generality  of 
persons:  while  this  may  be  a  good  thing  as  regards 
matters,  like  the  tax-roll,  that  relate  to  our  obvious 
duty  to  the  immediate  community,  it  has  in  most 
things  a  somewhat  vulgarizing  effect,  tending  to  pro- 
mote conformity  rather  than  a  distinctive  life.  If  the 
scholar's  study  were  on  the  market-place,  so  that  the 
industrious  townspeople  could  see  how  many  hours 
of  the  day  he  spends  in  apparent  idleness,  he  might 
lack  courage  to  pursue  his  vocation.  In  short,  we 
need  privacy  as  against  influences  that  are  not  edify- 
ing, and  communion  with  those  that  are. 

Even  telling  the  truth  does  not  result  so  much  from 
a  need  of  mental  accuracy,  though  this  is  strong  in 
some  minds,  as  from  a  sense  of  the  unfairness  of  de- 
ceiving people  of  our  own  sort,  and  of  the  shame  of 
being  detected  in  so  doing.  Consequently  the  maxim, 
"Truth  for  friends  and  lies  for  enemies,"  is  very  gen- 
erally followed,  not  only  by  savages  and  children,  but, 
more  or  less  openly,  by  civilized  people.  Most  per- 
sons feel  reluctant  to  tell  a  lie  in  so  many  words,  but 
few  have  any  compunctions  in  deceiving  by  manner, 
and  the  like,  persons  toward  whom  they  feel  no  obliga- 
tion. We  all  know  business  men  who  will  boast  of 
their  success  in  deceiving  rivals;  and  probably  few  of 
us  hold  ourselves  to  quite  the  same  standard  of  honor 
in  dealing  with  one  we  believe  to  be  tricky  and  ill  dis- 
posed toward  us,  that  we  would  if  we  thought  him 
honest   and   well   meaning.      "Conscience   is   born  of 

388 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

love"  in  this  as  in  many  matters.  A  thoughtful  ob- 
server will  easily  see  that  injustice  and  not  untruth 
is  the  essence  of  lying,  as  popularly  conceived. 

It  is  because  of  our  need  to  recall  vanished  per- 
sons, that  all  goodness  and  justice,  all  right  of  any 
large  sort,  depend  upon  an  active  imagination.  With- 
out it  we  are  the  prisoners  of  the  immediate  environ- 
ment and  of  the  suggestions  of  the  lower  organism. 
It  is  only  this  that  enables  us  to  live  with  the  best 
our  lives  have  afforded,  and  maintain  higher  sug- 
gestions to  compete  with  the  baser  ones  that  assail 
us.  Let  us  hear  Professor  James  again:  "When  for 
motives  of  honor  and  conscience  I  brave  the  condem- 
nation of  my  own  family,  club,  and  'set';  when  as  a 
Protestant  I  turn  Catholic;  as  a  Catholic,  freethinker; 
as  a  'regular  practitioner/  homeopath,  or  what  not, 
I  am  always  inwardly  strengthened  in  my  course,  and 
steeled  against  the  loss  of  my  actual  social  self  by 
the  thought  of  other  and  better  possible  social  judges 
than  those  whose  verdict  goes  against  me  now.  The 
ideal  social  self  which  I  thus  seek  in  appealing  to 
their  decision  may  be  very  remote;  it  may  be  repre- 
sented as  barely  possible.  I  may  not  hope  for  its 
realization  during  my  lifetime;  I  may  even  expect  the 
future  generations,  which  would  approve  me  if  they 
knew  me,  to  know  nothing  about  me  when  I  am  dead 
and  gone."  *  As  regards  the  nearness  or  remoteness 
of  the  companion  it  would  perhaps  be  sufficient  to 
say  that  if  imagined  he  is  actually  present,  so  far  as 
*  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  315. 
389 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

our  mental  and  moral  life  are  concerned,  and  except 
as  affecting  the  vividness  of  our  idea  of  him,  it  makes 
no  immediate  difference  whether  we  ever  saw  him  or 
whether  he  ever  had  any  corporeal  existence  at  all. 

The  alteration  of  conscience  due  to  the  advent  in 
thought  of  a  new  person  is  often  so  marked  that  one 
view  of  duty  is  quite  evidently  supplanted  by  a  fresh 
one,  due  to  the  fresh  suggestion.  Thus,  to  take  an 
example  probably  familiar  to  all  who  are  used  to 
mental  application,  it  sometimes  happens  that  a  stu- 
dent is  fagged  and  yet  feels  that  he  must  think  out  his 
problem;  there  is  a  strong  sense  of  oughtness  backing 
this  view,  which,  so  long  as  it  is  unopposed,  holds  its 
ground  as  the  call  of  duty.  But  now  a  friend  may 
come  in  and  suggest  to  him  that  he  ought  to  stop, 
that  if  he  goes  on  he  will  harm  himself  and  do  poor 
work.  Here  is  another  view  of  right,  and  the  mind 
must  now  make  a  fresh  synthesis  and  come,  perhaps, 
to  feel  that  its  duty  is  to  leave  off. 

Because  of  its  dependence  upon  personal  sugges- 
tion, the  right  always  reflects  a  social  group;  there 
is  always  a  circle  of  persons,  more  or  less  extended, 
whom  we  really  imagine,  and  who  thus  work  upon 
our  impulses  and  our  conscience;  while  people  out- 
side of  this  have  not  a  truly  personal  existence  for 
us.  The  extent  of  this  circle  depends  upon  many 
circumstances,  as  for  instance  upon  the  vigor  of  our 
imaginations,  and  the  reach  of  the  means  of  communi- 
cation through  which  personal  symbols  are  impressed 
upon  them. 

390 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

In  these  days  of  general  literacy,  many  get  their 
most  potent  impressions  from  books,  and  some,  find- 
ing this  sort  of  society  more  select  and  stimulating 
than  any  other,  cultivate  it  to  the  neglect  of  palpable 
persons.  This  kind  of  people  often  have  a  very  ten- 
der conscience  regarding  the  moral  problems  pre- 
sented in  novels,  but  a  rather  dull  one  for  those  of 
the  flesh-and-blood  life  about  them.  In  fact,  a  large 
part  of  the  sentiments  of  imaginative  persons  are 
purely  literary,  created  and  nourished  by  intercourse 
with  books,  and  only  indirectly  connected  with  what 
is  commonly  called  experience.  Nor  should  it  be  as- 
sumed that  these  literary  sentiments  are  necessarily 
a  mere  dissipation.  Our  highest  ideals  of  life  come 
to  us  largely  in  this  way,  since  they  depend  upon 
imaginative  converse  with  people  we  do  not  have  a 
chance  to  know  in  the  flesh.  Indeed,  the  expansion 
of  conscience  that  is  so  conspicuous  a  fact  of  recent 
years,  the  rise  of  moral  sentiment  regarding  inter- 
national relations,  alien  races,  and  social  and  indus- 
trial classes  other  than  our  own,  could  not  have  taken 
place  without  the  aid  of  cheap  printing  and  rapid 
communication.  Such  understanding  and  sense  of 
obligation  as  we  have  regarding  the  populace  of  great 
cities,  for  instance,  is  due  chiefly  to  writers  who, 
like  the  author  of  How  the  Other  Half  Lives,  describe 
the  life  of  such  people  in  a  vivid,  personal  way,  and 
so  cause  us  to  imagine  it. 

Not  to  pursue  this  line  of  thought  too  far,  it  is 
enough  for  our  purpose  to  note  that  conscience  is 
always  a  group  conscience,  however  the  group  may 

391 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

be  formed,  so  that  our  moral  sentiment  always  re- 
flects our  time,  our  country,  and  our  special  field  of 
personal  imagination.  On  the  other  hand,  our  sense 
of  right  ignores  those  whom  we  do  not,  through  sym- 
pathy, feel  as  part  of  ourselves,  no  matter  how  close 
their  physical  contiguity.  To  the  Norman  conqueror 
the  Saxon  was  an  inferior  animal,  whose  sentiments 
he  no  more  admitted  to  his  imagination,  I  suppose, 
than  a  farmer  does  those  of  his  cattle,  and  toward 
whom,  accordingly,  he  did  not  feel  human  obligation. 
It  was  the  same  with  the  slaveholder  and  the  slave, 
and  so  it  sometimes  is  with  employer  and  wage-earner. 
The  behavior  of  the  Europeans  toward  the  Chinese 
during  the  recent  invasion  of  China  showed  in  a  strik- 
ing manner  how  completely  moral  obligation  breaks 
down  in  dealing  with  people  who  are  not  felt  to  be  of 
kindred  humanity  with  ourselves. 

In  minds  capable  of  constructive  imagination  the 
social  factor  in  conscience  may  take  the  form  of  ideal 
persons,  whose  traits  are  used  as  a  standard  of  be- 
havior. 

Idealization,  of  this  or  any  other  sort,  is  not  to 
be  thought  of  as  sharply  marked  off  from  experience 
and  memory.  It  seems  probable  that  the  mind  is 
never  indifferent  to  the  elements  presented  to  it,  but 
that  its  very  nature  is  to  select,  arrange,  harmonize, 
idealize.  That  is,  the  whole  is  always  acting  upon 
the  parts,  tending  to  make  them  one  with  itself. 
What  we  call  distinctively  an  ideal  is  only  a  relatively 
complex  and  finished  product  of  this  activity.     The 

392 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

past,  as  it  lives  in  our  minds,  is  never  a  mere  repe- 
tition of  old  experience,  but  is  always  colored  by  our 
present  feeling,  is  always  idealized  in  some  sense; 
and  it  is  the  same  with  our  anticipation  of  the  future, 
so  that  to  wholesome  thought  expectation  is  hope. 
Thus  the  mind  is  ever  an  artist,  re-creating  things 
in  a  manner  congenial  to  itself,  and  special  arts  are  only 
a  more  deliberate  expression  of  a  general  tendency. 

An  ideal,  then,  is  a  somewhat  definite  and  felicitous 
product  of  imagination,  a  harmonious  and  congenial 
reconstruction  of  the  elements  of  experience.  And  a 
personal  ideal  is  such  a  harmonious  and  congenial  re- 
construction of  our  experience  of  persons.  Its  active 
function  is  to  symbolize  and  define  the  desirable,  and 
by  so  doing  to  make  it  the  object  of  definite  endeavor. 
The  ideal  of  goodness  is  only  the  next  step  beyond 
the  good  man  of  experience,  and  performs  the  same 
energizing  office.  Indeed,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  there  is  no  separation  between  actual  and  ideal 
persons,  only  a  more  .  or  less  definite  connection  of 
personal  ideas  with  material  bodies. 

There  are  all  degrees  of  vagueness  or  definition  in 
our  personal  ideals.  They  may  be  no  more  than 
scattered  imaginings  of  traits  which  we  have  met  in 
experience  and  felt  to  be  worthy;  or  they  may  assume 
such  fulness  and  cohesion  as  to  be  distinct  ideal  per- 
sons. There  may  even  be  several  personal  ideals;  one 
may  cherish  one  ideal  of  himself  and  a  different  one 
for  each  of  his  intimate  friends;  or  his  imagination 
may  project  several  ideals  of  himself,  to  correspond 
to  various  phases  of  his  development. 

393 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Probably  the  phrase  "ideal  person"  suggests  some- 
thing more  unified  and  consistent  than  is  actually 
present  in  the  minds  of  most  people  when  they  con- 
ceive the  desirable  or  good  in  personal  character.  Is 
it  not  rather  ideal  traits  or  sentiments,  fragments  of 
personal  experience,  phases  of  past  intercourse  re- 
turning in  the  imagination  with  a  new  emphasis  in 
the  presence  of  new  situations?  We  have  at  times 
divined  in  other  people  courage,  generosity,  patience, 
and  justice,  and  judged  them  to  be  good.  Now,  when 
we  find  ourselves  in  a  situation  where  these  traits  are 
called  for,  we  are  likely  to  be  reminded  by  that  very 
fact  of  our  previous  experience  of  them;  and  the 
memory  of  it  brings  these  sentiments  more  vividly 
to  life  and  gives  them  more  authority  in  conscience. 
Thus  a  person  hesitating  whether  to  smuggle  in  duti- 
able goods  is  likely  to  think  in  his  perplexity  of  some 
one  whom  he  has  come  to  regard  as  honorable  in 
such  matters,  and  of  how  that  one  would  feel  and  act 
under  like  conditions. 

This  building  up  of  higher  personal  conceptions 
does  not  lend  itself  to  precise  description.  It  is  mostly 
subconscious;  the  mind  is  continually  at  work  order- 
ing and  bettering  its  past  and  present  experiences, 
working  them  up  in  accordance  with  its  own  instinc- 
tive need  for  consistency  and  pleasantness;  ever  ideal- 
izing, but  rarely  producing  clean-cut  ideals.  It  finds 
its  materials  both  in  immediate  personal  intercourse 
and  through  books  and  other  durable  media  of  ex- 
pression. "Books,  monuments,  pictures,  conversa- 
tion, are  portraits  in  which  he  finds  the  lineaments 

394 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

he  is  forming."  "All  that  is  said  of  the  wise  man  .  .  . 
describes  to  each  reader  his  own  idea,  describes  his 
unattained  but  attainable  self."  *  "A  few  anecdotes, 
a  few  traits  of  character,  manners,  face,  a  few  inci- 
dents, have  an  emphasis  in  your  memory  out  of  all 
proportion  to  their  apparent  significance,  if  you  mea- 
sure them  by  the  ordinary  standards.  They  relate 
to  your  gift.  Let  them  have  their  weight,  and  do  not 
reject  them  and  cast  about  for  illustrations  more 
usual  in  literature.  What  your  heart  thinks  great 
is  great.     The  soul's  emphasis  is  always  right."  f 

Idealism  in  this  vague  form  has  neither  first,  second, 
nor  third  person.  It  is  simply  an  impression  of  the 
desirable  in  personality,  and  is  impulsively  applied 
to  your  conduct,  my  conduct,  or  his  conduct,  as  the 
case  may  be.  The  sentiment  occurs  to  us,  and  the 
connection  in  which  it  occurs  determines  its  moral 
application.  We  sometimes  speak  as  if  it  required  an 
unusual  effort  of  virtue  to  apply  the  same  standards 
to  ourselves  as  to  others;  and  so  it  does,  in  one  sense; 
but  in  another  it  is  easier  and  more  common  to  do 
this  than  not  to  do  it.  The  simplest  thing,  as  regards 
the  mental  process  concerned,  is  to  take  ideas  of  con- 
duct as  they  come,  without  thinking  specially  where 
they  come  from,  and  judge  them  by  the  standard  that 
conscience  presents  to  us.  Injustice  and  personal 
wrong  of  all  sorts,  as  between  one's  self  and  others, 
commonly  consist,  not  in  imagining  the  other  man's' 
point  of  view  and  refusing  to  give  it  weight;  but  in 
not  imagining  it,  not  admitting  him  to  the  tribunal 

*  Emerson,  History.  t  Idem,  Spiritual  Laws. 

395 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

at  all.  It  is  in  exerting  the  imagination  that  the 
effort  of  virtue  comes  in.  One  who  entertains  the 
thought  and  feeling  of  others  can  hardly  refuse  them 
justice;  he  has  made  them  a  part  of  himself.  There 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  no  first  or  second  person  about  a 
sentiment;  if  it  is  alive  in  the  mind  that  is  all  there  is 
to  the  matter. 

It  is  perhaps  the  case,  however,  that  almost  e very- 
person  of  imagination  has  at  times  a  special  and 
somewhat  definite  ideal  self,  concerning  which  he  has 
the  "my"  feeling,  and  which  he  would  not  use  in 
judging  others.  It  is,  like  all  ideals,  a  product  of 
constructive  imagination  working  upon  experience. 
It  represents  what  we  should  like  to  see  ourselves, 
and  has  an  especially  vigorous  and  varied  life  in  early 
youth,  when  the  imagination  projects  models  to  match 
each  new  aspiration  that  gains  power  over  it.  In  a 
study  of  the  Continued  Stories  of  children,  by  Mabel  W. 
Learoyd,  many  interesting  facts  are  given  illustrating 
sustained  self-idealization.  These  continued  stories 
are  somewhat  consecutive  series  of  imaginations  on  the 
part  of  the  young,  recalled  and  described  at  a  later 
period.  Two-thirds  are  said  to  embody  an  ideal,  and 
the  author,  in  an  idealized  form,  is  the  hero  of  many  of 
them.*  An  instance  of  this  same  process  continued 
into  old  age  is  the  fact  mentioned  by  Mr.  E.  W.  Emer- 
son in  his  Emerson  in  Concord, f  that  the  poet's  diary 
contains  frequent  allusion  to  one  Osman,  who  stands 
for  an  ideal  self,  a  more  perfect  Emerson  of  his  aspira- 
tion. 

*  Amer.  Jour,  of  Psychology,  vol.  7,  p.  86. 
f  See  pp.  101,  210,  226. 

396 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

It  would  always  be  found,  I  think,  that  our  ideal 
self  is  constructed  chiefly  out  of  ideas  about  us  at- 
tributed to  other  people.  We  can  hardly  get  any 
distinct  view  of  ourselves  except  in  this  way,  that  is 
by  placing  ourselves  at  the  standpoint  of  some  one 
else.  The  impressions  thus  gained  are  worked  over 
and  over,  like  other  mental  material,  and,  according 
to  the  imaginative  vigor  of  the  mind,  more  or  less  re- 
organized, and  projected  as  an  ideal. 

With  some  this  ideal  is  quite  definite  and  visible 
before  the  eye  of  the  mind.  I  have  heard  the  expres- 
sion "seeing  yourself"  applied  to  it.  Thus  one  woman 
says  of  another,  "She  always  sees  herself  in  evening 
dress,"  meaning  that  her  ideal  of  herself  is  one  of 
social  propriety  or  distinction,  and  that  it  takes  the 
form  of  an  image  of  her  visible  person  as  it  appears 
to  others  in  a  shape  expressing  these  traits.  This  is, 
of  course,  a  phase  of  the  reflected  self,  discussed  in 
the  fifth  chapter.  Some  people  "see  themselves"  so 
constantly,  and  strive  so  obviously  to  live  up  to  the 
image,  that  they  give  a  curious  impression  of  always 
acting  a  part,  as  if  one  should  compose  a  drama  with 
himself  as  chief  personage,  and  then  spend  his  life 
playing  it.  Perhaps  something  of  this  sort  is  inevi- 
table with  persons  of  vivid  imagination. 

Once  formed  and  familiarized  the  ideal  self  serves, 
like  any  ideal  only  more  directly,  as  an  incitement  to 
growth  in  its  direction,  and  a  punishment  to  retro- 
gression. A  man  who  has  become  used  to  imagining 
himself  as  noble,  beneficent,  and  respected  has  a  real 
picture  in  his  mind,  a  fair  product  of  aspiring  thought, 

397 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  work  of  art.  If  his  conduct  violates  this  imagina- 
tion he  has  a  sense  of  ugliness  and  shame;  there  is  a 
rent  in  the  picture,  a  rude,  shapeless  hole,  shattering 
its  beauty,  and  calling  for  painful  and  tedious  repairs 
before  it  can  be  even  tolerable  to  look  upon.  Re- 
pentance is  the  pain  of  this  spectacle;  and  the  clearer 
and  more  firmly  conceived  the  ideal,  the  greater  the 
pain. 

The  ideal  person  or  persons  of  an  ethical  religion 
are  the  highest  expression  of  this  creative  outreach- 
ing  of  the  mind  after  the  admirable  in  personality. 
It  can  hardly  be  supposed,  by  any  one  who  is  willing 
to  go  into  the  psychology  of  the  matter  at  all,  that 
they  are  radically  different  from  other  ideal  persons, 
or  in  any  way  sharply  divided  from  the  mass  of  per- 
sonal thought.  Any  comparative  study  of  idealism, 
among  nations  in  various  stages  of  civilization,  among 
persons  of  different  intellectual  power,  among  the 
various  periods  of  development  in  one  individual,  can 
hardly  fail,  I  should  say,  to  leave  a  conviction  that 
all  hangs  together,  that  there  is  no  chasm  anywhere, 
that  the  most  rudimentary  idealizing  impulse  of  the 
savage  or  the  child  is  of  a  piece  with  the  highest  re- 
ligious conceptions.  The  tendency  of  such  a  view,  of 
course,  is  not  to  drag  down  the  exalted,  but  to  show 
all  as  part  of  a  common  life. 

All  ideals  of  personality  are  derived  from  inter- 
course, and  all  that  attain  any  general  acceptance 
have  a  social  organization  and  history.  Each  histori- 
cal epoch  or  nation  has  its  somewhat  distinctive  per- 
sonal ideals,   which  are  instilled  into  the  individual 

398 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

from  the  general  store  of  thought.  It  is  especially 
true  that  the  persons  of  religion  have  this  character. 
They  are  communal  and  cumulative,  are  gradually 
built  up  and  become  in  some  degree  an  institution. 
In  this  way  they  may  acquire  richness,  clearness, 
sanctity,  and  authority,  and  may  finally  be  inculcated 
as  something  above  and  outside  of  the  human  mind. 
The  latter  is  certain  to  happen  if  they  are  made  the 
basis  of  a  discipline  to  be  applied  to  all  sorts  of  peo- 
ple. The  dogma  that  they  are  extra-human  serves, 
like  the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  a  court,  to  secure  to 
them  the  prestige  of  distance  and  inaccessibility. 

It  is  a  chief  function  of  religious  organization  to 
make  the  moral  synthesis  more  readily  attainable,  by 
establishing  a  spiritual  discipline,  or  system  of  in- 
fluences and  principles,  which  shall  constantly  stim- 
ulate one's  higher  sentiments,  and  furnish  a  sort  of 
outline  or  scaffolding  of  suggestions  to  aid  him  in  organ- 
izing his  thought.  In  doing  this  its  main  agent  is  the 
inculcation  of  personal  ideals,  although  the  teaching  of 
creeds  is  also,  perhaps,  important  to  the  same  purpose. 
It  is  apparently  part  of  the  legitimate  function  of 
organized  moral  thought  to  enter  the  vaguer  fields  of 
speculation  about  conduct  and  inculcate  provisional 
ideas,  relating  for  instance  to  the  origin  and  meaning  of 
life — matters  which  the  mind  must  and  will  explore, 
with  or  without  a  guide.  To  have  suggested  to  them 
definite  ways  of  thinking  regarding  such  matters  helps 
to  make  mental  unity  possible,  and  to  save  men  from 
the  aimless  and  distracting  wanderings  that  often  end 
in  despair.     Of  course  these  ideas  must  be  in  harmony 

399 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

with  the  general  state  of  thought,  consistent,  for  ex- 
ample, with  the  established  results  of  science.  Other- 
wise they  only  increase  the  distraction.  But  a  credible 
creed  is  an  excellent  thing,  and  the  lack  of  it  is  a  real 
moral  deficiency. 

Now  in  times  of  intellectual  unsettlement,  like  the 
present,  the  ideal  may  become  disorganized  and  scat- 
tered, the  face  of  God  blurred  to  the  view,  like  the 
reflection  of  the  sun  in  troubled  waters.  And  at  the 
same  time  the  creeds  become  incredible,  so  that,  until 
new  ones  can  be  worked  out  and  diffused,  each  man 
must  either  make  one  for  himself — a  task  to  which 
few  are  equal — or  undergo  distraction,  or  cease  to 
think  about  such  matters,  if  he  can.  This  state  of 
things  involves  some  measure  of  demoralization,  al- 
though it  may  be  part  of  a  movement  generally  be- 
neficent. Mankind  needs  the  highest  vision  of  per- 
sonality, and  needs  it  clear  and  vivid,  and  in  the  lack 
of  it  will  suffer  a  lack  in  the  clearness  and  cogency  of 
moral  thought.  It  is  the  natural  apex  to  the  pyra- 
mid of  personal  imagination,  and  when  it  is  wanting 
there  will  be  an  unremitting  and  eventually  more  or 
less  successful  striving  to  replace  it.  When  it  re- 
appears it  will,  of  course,  express  in  all  its  lineaments 
a  new  era  of  thought;  but  the  opinion  that  it  is  gone 
to  stay,  which  is  entertained  by  some,  seems  very 
ill  grounded. 

Comparative  studies  of  the  moral  ideas  of  different 
societies,  such  as  Wm.  G.  Sumner's  work  on  Folkways, 
make  it  clear  that  the  sense  of  right  does,  in  fact,  vary 

400 


THE  SOCIAL  ASPECT  OF  CONSCIENCE 

with  the  group,  and  that  "the  mores  can  make  any- 
thing right  or  anything  wrong."  Stealing,  canni- 
balism, and  many  other  things  that  we  condemn, 
may  be  regarded  as  permissible,  creditable,  or  even 
obligatory.  Matters  of  decency,  as  in  dress  or  man- 
ners, are  almost  wholly  conventional,  as  appears,  for 
instance,  when  certain  Africans  spit  upon  one  as  a 
sign  of  good-will. 

It  is  notable,  however,  that  there  are,  after  all, 
some  ideas  of  right  that  are  practically  universal. 
Here,  for  example,  are  three  things  that  all  tribes, 
so  far  as  I  can  discover,  regard  as  obligatory: 

1.  Loyalty  to  the  group.  Dante's  judgment  that 
traitors  belong  in  the  lowest  pit  of  Hell  expresses  a 
universal  sentiment  of  mankind. 

2.  Kindness  to  members  of  the  group. 

3.  Adherence  to  the  customs  of  the  tribe. 

These  are  universal  because  they  spring  from  uni- 
versal conditions  of  social  life.  All  men  live  in  co- 
operating groups,  and  without  loyalty  and  kindness 
'v- — they  cannot  co-operate  successfully.  And  conserva- 
tism must  be  cherished,  especially  among  savages,  who 
have  no  recorded  traditions,  because  it  is  the  means 
of  insuring  stability  and  preserving  the  results  of 
experience. 

Morals  are  profoundly  functional,  and  beneath 
many  strange  divergences  there  is  found  a  core  of 
likeness  corresponding  to  a  similarity  in  the  life- 
process  itself. 


401 


CHAPTER  XI 
PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

18  A  PHASE  OF  THE  QUESTION  OF  RIGHT  AND  WRONG — RELATION 
TO  THE  IDEA  OF  DEVELOPMENT — JUSTIFICATION  AND  MEANING 
OF  THE  PHRASE  "PERSONAL  DEGENERACY" — HEREDITARY  AND 
SOCIAL  FACTORS  IN  PERSONAL  DEGENERACY — DEGENERACY  A3 
A  MENTAL  TRAIT — CONSCIENCE  IN  DEGENERACY — GROUP  DE- 
GENERACY— CRIME,  INSANITY,  AND  RESPONSIBILITY — PRACTI- 
CAL EFFECT  OF  THE  ORGANIC  VIEW  UPON  RESPONSIBILITY — 
UPON   PUNISHMENT 

I  wish  to  touch  upon  this  subject  only  in  so  far  as 
to  suggest  a  general  way  of  conceiving  it  in  accord 
with  the  views  set  forth  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

The  question  of  personal  degeneracy  is  a  phase  of 
the  question  of  right  or  wrong  and  is  ultimately  de- 
termined by  conscience.  A  degenerate  might  be  de- 
fined as  one  whose  personality  falls  distinctly  short 
of  a  standard  set  by  the  dominant  moral  thought  of  a 
group.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  mind  to  form  stand- 
ards of  better  or  worse  in  all  matters  toward  which 
its  selective  activity  is  directed;  and  this  has  its  col- 
lective as  well  as  its  individual  aspect,  so  that  not 
only  every  man  but  every  group  has  its  preferences 
and  aversions,  its  good  and  bad.  The  selective,  or- 
ganizing processes  which  all  life,  and  notably  the  life 
of  the  mind,  presents,  involve  this  distinction;  it  is 
simply  a  formulation  of  the  universal  fact  of  prefer- 
ence.    We  cannot  view  things  in  which  we  are  inter- 

402 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

ested  without  liking  some  and  disliking  others;  and 
somewhat  in  proportion  to  our  interest  is  our  ten- 
dency to  express  these  likes  and  dislikes  by  good  and 
bad  or  similar  words.  And  since  there  is  nothing 
that  interests  us  so  much  as  persons,  judgments  of 
right  and  wrong  regarding  them  have  always  been  felt 
and  expressed  with  peculiar  zest  and  emphasis.  The 
righteous  and  the  wicked,  the  virtuous  and  the  vicious, 
the  good  and  bad  under  a  hundred  names,  have  been 
sharply  and  earnestly  discriminated  in  every  age  and 
country. 

Although  this  distinction  between  personal  good 
and  bad  has  always  been  a  fact  of  human  thought,  a 
broader  view  of  it  is  reached,  in  these  days,  through 
the  idea  of  evolution.  The  method  of  nature  being 
everywhere  selective,  growth  is  seen  to  take  place  not 
by  making  a  like  use  of  the  elements  already  existing, 
but  by  the  fostering  of  some  to  the  comparative  neg- 
lect or  suppression  of  others.  Or,  if  this  statement 
gives  too  much  the  idea  of  a  presiding  intelligence 
outside  the  process  itself,  we  may  simply  say  that 
the  functions  of  existing  elements  in  contributing  to 
further  growth  are  extremely  different,  so  much  so 
that  some  of  them  usually  appear  to  have  no  impor- 
tant function  at  all,  or  even  to  impede  the  growth, 
while  others  appear  to  be  the  very  heart  of  the  onward 
or  crescent  life.  This  idea  is  applicable  to  physio- 
logical processes,  such  as  go  on  within  our  bodies,  to 
the  development  of  species,  as  illustrated  with  such 
convincing  detail  by  Darwin,  and  to  all  the  processes 

403 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  thought  and  of  society;  so  that  the  forces  that  are 
observed  in  the  present,  if  viewed  with  reference  to 
function  or  tendency,  never  appear  to  be  on  the  same 
level  of  value,  but  are  strung  along  at  different  levels, 
some  below  a  mean,  some  above  it.  Thus  we  not  only 
have  the  actual  discrimination  of  good  and  bad  in 
persons,  but  a  philosophy  which  shows  it  as  an  inci- 
dent of  evolution,  a  reflection  in  thought  of  the  general 
movement  of  nature. 

Or,  to  regard  the  process  of  evolution  in  more  de- 
tail, we  find  degeneracy  or  inferiority  implied  in  that 
idea  of  variation  which  is  the  starting-point  of  Dar- 
winism. All  forms  of  life,  it  seems,  exhibit  varia- 
tions; that  is,  the  individuals  are  not  quite  alike  but 
differ  from  one  another  and  from  the  parents  in  a 
somewhat  random  manner,  so  that  some  are  better 
adapted  to  t%ie  actual  conditions  of  life,  and  some 
worse.  The  change  or  development  of  a  species  takes 
place  by  the  cumulative  survival  and  multiplication, 
generation  after  generation,  of  fit  or  fortunate  varia- 
tions. The  very  process  that  produces  the  fittest 
evidently  implies  the  existence  of  the  unfit;  and  the 
distinctly  unfit  individuals  of  any  species  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  degenerate. 

It  will  not  do  to  transfer  these  ideas  too  crudely  to 
the  mental  and  social  life  of  mankind;  but  it  will 
hardly  be  disputed  that  the  character  of  persons  ex- 
hibits variations  which  are  partly  at  least  incalculable, 
and  which  produce  on  the  one  hand  leadership  and 
genius  and  on  the  other  weakness  and  degeneracy. 
We   probably   cannot  have   the  one   without  having 

404 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

something,  at  least,  of  the  other,  though  I  believe 
that  the  variations  of  personality  are  capable,  to  a 
great  degree,  of  being  brought  under  rational  control. 

This  truth  that  all  forms  of  deficient  humanity- 
have  a  common  philosophical  aspect  is  one  reason 
for  giving  them  some  common  name,  like  degeneracy. 
Another  is  that  the  detailed  study  of  fact  more  and 
more  forces  the  conclusion  that  such  things  as  crime, 
pauperism,  idiocy,  insanity,  and  drunkenness  have,  in 
great  measure,  a  common  causation,  and  so  form, 
practically,  parts  of  a  whole.  We  see  this  in  the  study 
of  heredity,  which  shows  that  the  transmitted  taint 
commonly  manifests  itself  in  several  or  all  of  these 
forms  in  different  generations  or  individuals  of  the 
same  stock;  and  we  see  it  in  the  study  of  social  con- 
ditions, in  the  fact  that  where  these  conditions  are 
bad,  as  in  the  slums  of  great  cities,  all  the  forms  be- 
come more  prevalent.  A  third  reason  for  the  use  of 
a  special  term  is  that  it  is  desirable  that  the  matter 
receive  more  dispassionate  study  than  formerly,  and 
this  may  possibly  be  promoted  by  the  use  of  words 
free,  so  far  as  possible,  from  irrelevant  implications. 
Many  of  the  words  in  common  use,  such  as  badness, 
wickedness,  crime,  and  the  like,  reflect  particular 
views  of  the  facts,  such  as  the  religious  view  of  them 
as  righteousness  or  sin,  and  the  legal  view  as  criminal 
or  innocent,  while  degeneracy  suggests  the  disin- 
terestedness of  science. 

I  do  not  much  care  to  justify  the  particular  word 
degeneracy  in  this  connection,   further  than  to  say 

405 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  I  know  of  none  more  convenient  or  less  objec- 
tionable. It  comes,  of  course,  from  de  and  genus 
through  degenerare,  and  seems  to  mean  primarily  the 
state  of  having  fallen  from  a  type.  It  is  not  uncom- 
mon in  English  literature,  usually  meaning  inferiority 
to  the  standard  set  by  ancestors,  as  when  we  say  a 
degenerate  age,  a  degenerate  son,  etc.;  and  recently 
it  has  come  into  use  to  describe  any  kind  of  marked 
and  enduring  mental  defect  or  inferiority.  I  see  no 
objection  to  this  usage  unless  it  be  that  it  is  doubtfu' 
whether  the  mentally  or  morally  inferior  person  can 
in  all  cases  be  said  to  have  fallen  from  a  higher  state. 
This  might  be  plausibly  argued  on  both  sides,  but  ii 
does  not  seem  worth  while. 

I  use  the  phrase  personal  degeneracy,  then,  to  de- 
scribe the  state  of  persons  whose  character  and  con- 
duct fall  distinctly  below  the  type  or  standard  re- 
garded as  normal  by  the  dominant  sentiment  of  the 
group.  Although  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  defi- 
nition is  a  vague  one,  it  is  not  more  so,  perhaps,  than 
most  definitions  of  mental  or  social  phenomena. 
There  is  no  sharp  criterion  of  what  is  mentally  and 
socially  up  to  par  and  what  is  not,  but  there  are  large 
and  important  classes  whose  inferiority  is  evident, 
such  as  idiots,  imbeciles,  the  insane,  drunkards,  and 
criminals;  and  no  one  will  question  the  importance  of 
studying  the  whole  of  which  these  are  parts. 

It  is  altogether  a  social  matter  at  bottom;  that  is 
to  say,  degeneracy  exists  only  in  a  certain  relation 
between  a  person  and  the  rest  of  a  group.  In  so  far 
as  any  mental  or  physical  traits  constitute  it  they  do 

406 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

so  because  they  involve  unfitness  for  a  normal  social 
career,  in  which  alone  the  essence  of  the  matter  is 
found.  The  only  palpable  test  of  it — and  this  an 
uncertain  one — is  found  in  the  actual  career  of  the 
person,  and  especially  in  the  attitude  toward  him  of 
the  organized  thought  of  the  group.  We  agree  fairly 
well  upon  the  degeneracy  of  the  criminal,  largely  be- 
cause his  abnormality  is  of  so  obvious  and  trouble- 
some a  kind  that  something  in  particular  has  to  be 
done  about  it,  and  so  he  becomes  definitely  and  for- 
mally stigmatized  by  the  organs  of  social  judgment. 
Yet  even  from  this  decisive  verdict  an  appeal  is  suc- 
cessfully made  in  some  cases  to  the  wider  and  ma- 
turer  thought  of  mankind,  so  that  many  have  been 
executed  as  felons  who,  like  John  Brown,  are  now 
revered  as  heroes. 

In  short,  the  idea  of  wrong,  of  which  the  idea  of 
degeneracy  is  a  phase,  partakes  of  the  same  uncer- 
tainty that  belongs  to  its  antithesis,  the  idea  of  right. 
Both  are  expressions  of  an  ever-developing,  always 
selective  life,  and  share  in  the  indeterminateness  that 
necessarily  goes  with  growth.  They  assume  forms 
definite  enough  for  the  performance  of  their  momen- 
tous practical  functions,  but  always  remain  essentially 
plastic  and  variable. 

Concerning  the  causation  of  degeneracy,  we  may 
say,  as  of  every  aspect  of  personality,  that  its  roots 
are  to  be  looked  for  somewhere  in  the  mingling  of 
hereditary  and  social  factors  from  which  the  individual 
life   springs.     Both  of  these   factors   exhibit  marked 

407 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

variation;  men  differ  in  their  natural  traits  very  much 
as  other  animals  do,  and  they  also  find  themselves 
subject  to  the  varying  influences  of  a  diversified  social 
order.  The  actual  divergences  of  character  and  con- 
duct which  they  exhibit  are  due  to  the  composition  of 
these  two  variables  into  a  third  variable,  the  man 
himself. 

In  some  cases  the  hereditary  factor  is  so  clearly 
deficient  as  to  make  it  natural  and  justifiable  to  re- 
gard heredity  as  the  cause;  in  a  much  larger  number 
of  cases  there  is  good  reason  to  think  that  social  con- 
ditions are  more  particularly  to  blame,  and  that  the 
original  hereditary  outfit  was  fairly  good.  In  a  third 
class,  the  largest,  perhaps,  of  all,  it  is  practically  im- 
possible to  discriminate  between  them.  Indeed,  it  is 
always  a  loose  way  of  speaking  to  set  heredity  and  en- 
vironment over  against  each  other  as  separable  forces, 
or  to  say  that  either  one  is  the  cause  of  character  or 
of  any  personal  trait.  They  have  no  separate  exist- 
ence after  personal  development  is  under  way;  each 
reacts  upon  the  other,  and  every  trait  is  due  to  their 
intimate  union  and  co-operation.  All  we  are  justi- 
fied in  saying  is  that  one  or  the  other  may  be  so  aber- 
rant as  to  demand  our  special  attention. 

Congenital  idiocy  is  regarded  as  hereditary  degen- 
eracy, because  it  is  obvious  that  no  social  environ- 
ment can  make  the  individual  other  than  deficient, 
and  we  must  work  upon  heredity  if  we  wish  to  prevent 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  when  we  find  that  certain 
conditions,  like  residence  in  crowded  parts  of  a  city, 
are  accompanied  by  the  appearance  of  a  large  per  cent 

408 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

of  criminality,  among  a  population  whom  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  naturally  deficient,  we  are  justi- 
fied in  saying  that  the  causes  of  this  degeneracy  are 
social  rather  than  hereditary.  Probably  much  of  the 
criminality,  in  the  latter  case,  is  due  to  the  con- 
junction of  degrading  surroundings  with  a  degree  of 
hereditary  deficiency  that  a  better  training  would 
have  rendered  harmless,  or  at  least  inconspicuous; 
but,  practically,  if  we  wish  to  diminish  this  sort  of 
degeneracy,  we  must  work  upon  social  conditions. 

A  sound  mental  heredity  consists  essentially  in 
teachability,  a  capacity  to  learn  the  things  required 
by  the  social  order;  and  the  congenital  idiot  is  de- 
generate by  the  hereditary  factor  alone,  because  he 
is  incapable  of  learning  these  things.  But  a  sound 
heredity  is  no  safeguard  against  personal  degeneracy; 
if  we  have  teachability  all  turns  upon  what  is  taught, 
and  this  depends  upon  the  social  environment.  The 
very  faculties  that  lead  a  child  to  become  good  or 
moral  in  a  good  environment  may  cause  him  to  be- 
come criminal  in  a  criminal  environment;  it  is  all  a 
question  of  what  he  finds  to  learn.  It  may  be  said, 
then,  that  of  the  four  possible  combinations  between 
good  and  bad  heredity  and  good  and  bad  environment, 
three — bad  heredity  with  bad  or  good  environment, 
and  good  heredity  with  bad  environment — lead  to 
degeneracy.  Only  when  both  elements  are  favora- 
ble can  we  have  a  good  result.  Of  course,  by  bad 
environment  in  this  connection  must  be  understood 
bad  in  its  action  upon  this  particular  individual,  not 
as  judged  by  some  other  standard. 

409 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

As  the  social  surroundings  of  a  person  can  be  changed, 
and  his  hereditary  bias  cannot,  it  is  expedient,  in  that 
vast  majority  of  cases  in  which  causation  is  obscure, 
to  assume  as  a  working  hypothesis  that  the  social 
factor  is  at  fault,  and  to  try  by  altering  it  to  alter  the 
person.  This  is  more  and  more  coming  to  be  done 
in  all  intelligent  treatment  of  degeneracy. 

As  a  mental  trait,  marking  a  person  off  as,  in  some 
sense,  worse  than  others  in  the  same  social  group, 
degeneracy  appears  to  consist  in  some  lack  in  the 
higher  organization  of  thought.  It  is  not  that  one 
has  the  normal  mental  outfit  plus  something  addi- 
tional, called  wrong,  crime,  sin,  madness,  or  the  like, 
but  that  he  is  in  some  way  deficient  in  the  mental 
activity  by  which  sympathy  is  created  and  by  which 
all  impulses  are  unified  with  reference  to  a  general 
life.  The  criminal  impulses,  rage,  fear,  lust,  pride, 
vanity,  covetousness,  and  so  on,  are  the  same  in  gen- 
eral type  as  those  of  the  normal  person;  the  main 
difference  is  that  the  criminal  lacks,  in  one  way  or 
another,  the  higher  mental  organization — a  phase  of 
the  social  organization — to  which  these  impulses  should 
be  subordinate.  It  would  not  be  very  difficult  to  take 
the  seven  deadly  sins — Pride,  Envy,  Anger,  Sloth, 
Covetousness,  Gluttony,  and  Lust — and  show  that 
each  may  be  regarded  as  the  undisciplined  manifes- 
tation of  a  normal  or  functional  tendency.  Indeed, 
as  regards  anger  this  was  attempted  in  a  previous 
chapter. 

"To  describe  in  detail  the  different  varieties  of 
410 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

degeneracy  that  are  met  with,"  says  Doctor  Maudsley, 
"would  be  an  endless  and  barren  labor.  It  would 
be  as  tedious  as  to  attempt  to  describe  particularly 
the  exact  character  of  the  ruins  of  each  house  in  a 
city  that  had  been  destroyed  by  an  earthquake:  in 
one  place  a  great  part  of  the  house  may  be  left  stand- 
ing, in  another  place  a  wall  or  two,  and  in  another 
the  ruin  is  so  great  that  scarcely  one  stone  is  left 
upon  another."  * 

In  the  lowest  phases  mental  organization  can  hardly 
be  said  to  exist  at  all:  an  idiot  has  no  character,  no 
consistent  or  effective  individuality.  There  is  no  uni- 
fication, and  so  no  self-control  or  stable  will;  action 
simply  reflects  the  particular  animal  impulse  that  is 
ascendant.  Hunger,  sexual  lust,  rage,  dread,  and,  in 
somewhat  higher  grades,  a  crude,  naive  kindliness,  are 
each  felt  and  expressed  in  the  simplest  manner  possi- 
ble. There  can,  of  course,  be  little  or  no  true  sym- 
pathy, and  the  unconsciousness  of  what  is  going  on  in 
the  minds  of  other  persons  prevents  any  sense  of 
decency  or  attempt  to  conform  to  social  standards. 

In  the  higher  grades  we  may  make  the  distinction, 
already  suggested  in  speaking  of  egotism,  between 
the  unstable  and  the  rigid  varieties.  Indeed,  as  was 
intimated,  selfishness  and  degeneracy  are  of  the  same 
general  character;  both  being  defined  socially  by  a 
falling  short  of  accepted  standards  of  conduct,  and 
mentally  by  some  lack  in  the  scope  and  organization 
of  the  mind. 

There  is,  then,  one  sort  of  persons  in  whom  the 
*  The  Pathology  of  Mind,  p.  425. 
411 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

most  conspicuous  and  troublesome  trait  is  mere  men- 
tal inconsistency  and  lack  of  character,  and  another 
who  possess  a  fair  degree,  at  least,  of  consistency  and 
unity  of  purpose,  but  whose  mental  scope  or  reach  of 
sympathy  is  so  small  that  they  have  no  adequate  re- 
lation to  the  life  about  them. 

An  outgrowing,  impressionable  sort  of  mind,  if 
deficient  in  the  power  to  work  up  its  material,  is 
necessarily  unstable  and  lacking  in  momentum  and 
definite  direction:  and  in  the  more  marked  cases  we 
have  people  of  the  hysterical  type,  unstable  forms  of 
dementia  and  insanity,  and  impulsive  crime.  "The 
fundamental  defect  in  the  hysterical  brain,"  says 
Doctor  Dana,  "is  that  it  is  circumscribed  in  its  asso- 
ciative functions;  the  field  of  consciousness  is  limited 
just  as  is  the  field  of  vision.  The  mental  activity  is 
confined  to  personal  feelings,  which  are  not  regulated 
by  connotation  of  past  experiences,  hence  they  flow 
over  too  easily  into  emotional  outbursts  or  motor 
paroxysms.  The  hysterical  person  cannot  think."  * 
It  is  evident  that  something  similar  might  be  said  of 
all  manifestations  of  instability. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  ingrowing  sort  of  mind, 
whose  tendency  is  rather  to  work  over  and  over  its 
cherished  thoughts  than  to  open  out  to  new  ones, 
may  have  a  marked  deficiency  of  sensibility  and 
breadth  of  perception.  If  so,  the  person  is  likely  to 
exhibit  some  form  of  gross  and  persistent  egotism, 
such  as  sensuality,  avarice,  narrow  and  ruthless  am- 
bition, fanaticism,  of  a  hard,  cold  sort,  delusion  of 
*  C.  L.  Dana,  Nervous  Diseases,  p.  425. 
412 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

greatness,  or  those  kinds  of  crime  that  result  from 
habitual  insensibility  to  social  standards  rather  than 
from  transient  impulse. 

As  conscience  is  simply  the  completest  product  of 
mental  organization,  it  will  of  course  share  in  what- 
ever defect  there  may  be  in  the  mental  life  as  a  whole. 
In  the  lower  grades  of  idiocy  we  may  assume  that 
there  is  no  system  in  the  mind  from  which  a  conscience 
could  spring.  In  a  higher  degenerate  of  the  unstable 
type,  there  is  a  conscience,  but  it  is  vacillating  in  its 
judgments,  transient  in  duration,  and  ineffectual  in 
control,  proportionally  to  the  mental  disintegration 
which  it  reflects.  We  all,  probably,  can  think  of  peo- 
ple conspicuously  lacking  in  self-control,  and  it  will 
perhaps  be  evident,  when  we  reflect  upon  them,  that 
their  consciences  are  of  this  sort.  The  voice  of  con- 
science, with  them,  is  certain  to  be  chiefly  an  echo  of 
temporary  emotions,  because  a  synthesis  embracing 
long  periods  of  time  is  beyond  their  range;  it  is  fre- 
quently inaudible,  on  account  of  their  being  engrossed 
by  passing  impulses,  and  their  conduct  is  largely  with- 
out any  rational  control  at  all.  They  are  likely  to 
suffer  sharp  and  frequent  attacks  of  remorse,  on  ac- 
count of  failure  to  live  up  to  their  standards,  but  it 
would  seem  that  the  wounds  do  not  go  very  deep  as 
a  rule,  but  share  in  the  general  superficiality  of  their 
lives.  People  of  this  sort,  if  not  too  far  gone  in  weak- 
ness, are  probably  the  ones  who  profit  most  by  punish- 
ment, because  they  are  helped  by  the  sharp  and  defi- 
nite pain  which  it  associates  with  acts  that  they  recog- 

413 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nize  as  wrong,  but  cannot  keep  from  doing  without 
a  vivid  emotional  deterrent.  They  are  also  the  ones 
who,  in  their  eagerness  to  escape  from  the  pains  of 
fluctuation  and  inconsistency,  are  most  prone  to  sub- 
mit blindly  to  some  external  and  dogmatic  authority. 
Unable  to  rule  themselves,  they  crave^a  master,  and  if 
he  only  is  a  master,  that  is,  one  capable  of  grasping 
and  dominating  the  emotions  by  which  they  are  swayed, 
they  will  often  cleave  to  him  and  kiss  the  rod. 

With  those  whose  defect  is  rigidity  rather  than  in- 
stability, conscience  may  exist  and  may  control  the 
life;  the  trouble  with  it  is,  that  it  is  not  in  key  with 
the  consciences  of  other  people.  There  is  an  original 
poverty  of  the  impulses  that  extends  to  any  result 
that  can  be  worked  out  of  them.  It  may  appear 
startling  to  some  to  assert  that  conscience  may  dic- 
tate the  wrong,  but  such  is  quite  clearly  the  fact,  if 
we  identify  the  right  with  some  standard  of  conduct 
accepted  among  people  of  broad  sympathies.  Con- 
science is  the  only  possible  moral  guide — any  external 
authority  can  work  morally  upon  us  only  through 
conscience — but  it  always  partakes  of  the  limitations 
of  one's  character,  and  so  far  as  that  is  degenerate 
the  idea  of  right  is  degenerate  also.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  very  worst  men  of  the  hard,  narrow,  fanati- 
cal, or  brutal  sorts,  often  live  at  peace  with  their  con- 
sciences. I  feel  sure  that  any  one  who  reflects  imagi- 
natively upon  the  characters  of  people  he  has  known 
of  this  sort  will  agree  that  such  is  the  case.  A  bad 
conscience  implies  mental  division,  inconsistencj'-  be- 
tween thought  and  deed,  and  men  of  this  sort  are 

414 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

often  quite  at  one  with  themselves.  The  usurer  who 
grinds  the  faces  of  the  poor,  the  unscrupulous  specu- 
lator who  causes  the  ruin  of  innocent  investors  to  ag- 
grandize himself,  the  fanatical  anarchist  who  stabs  a 
king  or  shoots  a  president,  the  Kentucky  mountaineer 
who  regards  murderous  revenge  as  a  duty,  the  assaulter 
who  causes  pictures  commemorative  of  his  crimes  to 
be  tattooed  on  his  skin,  are  diverse  examples  of  wrong- 
doers whose  consciences  not  only  do  not  punish,  but 
often  instigate  their  ill  deeds. 

The  idea,  cherished  by  some,  that  crime  or  wrong 
of  any  sort  is  invariably  pursued  by  remorse,  arises 
from  the  natural  but  mistaken  assumption  that  all 
other  people  have  consciences  similar  to  our  own. 
The  man  of  sensitive  temperament  and  refined  habit 
of  thought  feels  that  he  would  suffer  remorse  if  he 
had  done  the  deed,  and  supposes  that  the  same  must 
be  the  case  with  the  perpetrator.  On  the  contrary, 
it  seems  likely  that  only  a  very  small  proportion  of 
those  whom  the  higher  moral  sentiment  regards  as 
wrong-doers  suffer  much  from  the  pricks  of  conscience. 
If  the  general  tenor  of  a  man's  life  is  high,  and  the  act 
is  the  fearful  outcome  of  a  moment  of  passion,  as  is 
often  the  case  with  unpremeditated  murder,  he  will 
suffer,  but  if  his  life  is  all  of  a  piece,  he  will  not.  All 
authorities  agree  that  the  mass  of  criminals,  and  the 
same  is  clearly  true  of  ill-doers  within  the  law,  have  a 
habit  of  mind  of  which  the  ill  deed  is  the  logical  out- 
come, so  that  there  is  nothing  sudden  or  catastrophic 
about  it.  Of  course,  if  we  apply  the  word  conscience 
only  to  the  mental  synthesis  of  a  mind  rich  in  higher 

415 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sentiments,  then  such  people  have  no  consciences,  but 
it  seems  a  broader  view  of  the  matter  to  say  that  they 
have  a  conscience,  in  so  far  as  they  have  mental  unity, 
but  that  it  reflects  the  general  narrowness  and  perver- 
sion of  their  lives.  In  fact,  people  of  this  description 
usually,  if  not  always,  have  standards  of  their  own, 
some  sort  of  honor  among  thieves,  which  they  will 
not  transgress,  or  which,  if  transgressed,  cause  re- 
morse. It  is  impossible  that  mental  organization 
should  not  produce  a  moral  synthesis  of  some  sort. 

In  many  cases  degenerate  conduct  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  individual  lives  in  a  group  having  degenerate 
standards:  it  does  not  indicate  intrinsic  inferiority  on 
his  part  at  all.  I  mean,  for  example,  that  a  boy  who 
runs  away  from  school,  plunders  freight-cars,  breaks 
windows,  and  the  like,  may  do  these  things  merely 
from  suggestion  and  emulation — just  as  other  boys 
under  other  influences  turn  their  energies  into  ath- 
letics and  the  activities  of  Boy  Scouts — without  being 
exceptional  in  any  way  unless  as  to  the  sort  of  "bunch" 
he  runs  with.  And  the  same  may  be  true  of  any  kind 
of  misconduct.  These  things  exist  in  groups,  and  the 
degenerate  individual,  so  far  as  he  is  human,  is  a 
socius  like  the  rest  of  us.  The  group  forms  his  con- 
science, and  what  it  countenances  or  admires  will 
not  seem  wrong  to  him,  no  matter  how  the  rest  of  so- 
ciety may  regard  it.  If  it  becomes  traditional  for  the 
members  of  a  certain  college  fraternity  to  drink, 
gamble,  and  cheat  their  way  through  examinations, 
the  freshman  will  fall  into  these  practices  as  a  matter 
of  course. 

416 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

In  fact  the  great  wrongs  are  done  mainly  by  people 
of  normal  capacity  who  believe  they  are  doing  right. 
Their  consciences  are  supported  by  the  mores,  or  col- 
lective moral  feeling  of  a  group.  It  was  thus  that  the 
Germans  went  into  the  Great  War. 

There  is  nothing  in  this  way  of  conceiving  degen- 
eracy which  tends  to  break  down  the  practical  dis- 
tinctions among  the  various  forms  of  it,  as,  for  in- 
stance, that  between  crime  and  insanity.  Though 
the  line  between  these  two  is  arbitrary  and  uncertain, 
as  must  always  be  the  case  in  the  classification  of 
mental  facts,  and  as  is  confessed  by  the  existence  of 
a  class  called  the  criminal  insane,  yet  the  distinction 
itself  and  the  difference  in  treatment  associated  with 
it  are  sound  enough  in  a  general  way. 

The  contrast  between  our  attitudes  toward  crime 
and  toward  insanity  is  primarily  a  matter  of  personal 
idea  and  impulse.  We  understand  the  criminal  act, 
or  think  we  do,  and  we  feel  toward  it  resentment,  or 
hostile  sympathy;  while  we  do  not  understand  the 
insane  act,  and  so  do  not  resent  it,  but  regard  it  with 
pity,  curiosity,  or  disgust.  If  one  man  strikes  down 
another  to  rob  him,  or  in  revenge,  we  can  imagine  the 
offender's  state  of  mind,  his  motive  lives  in  our  thought 
and  is  condemned  by  conscience  precisely  as  if  we 
thought  of  doing  the  act  ourselves.  Indeed,  to  under- 
stand an  act  is  to  think  of  doing  it  ourselves.  But, 
if  it  is  done  for  no  reason  that  we  can  comprehend, 
we  do  not  imagine,  do  not  get  a  personal  impression 
of  the  case  at  all,  but  have  to  think  of  it  as  merely 

417 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

mechanical.  It  is  the  same  sort  of  difference  as  that 
between  a  person  who  injures  us  accidentally  and  one 
who  does  it  "on  purpose." 

Secondarily,  it  is  a  matter  of  expediency.  We  feel 
that  the  act  which  we  can  imagine  ourselves  doing 
ought  to  be  punished,  because  we  perceive  by  our 
own  sympathy  with  it  that  more  of  this  sort  of  thing 
is  likely  to  take  place  if  it  is  not  put  down.  We  want 
the  house-breaker  to  be  stigmatized,  disgraced,  and 
imprisoned,  because  we  feel  that,  if  this  is  not  done, 
he  and  others  will  be  encouraged  to  more  house- 
breaking; but  we  feel  only  pity  for  the  man  who  thinks 
he  is  Julius  Caesar,  because  we  suppose  there  is  nothing 
to  be  feared  either  from  him  or  his  example.  This 
practical  basis  of  the  distinction  expresses  itself  in 
the  general,  and  I  think  justifiable,  reluctance  to  ap- 
ply the  name  and  treatment  of  insanity  to  behavior 
which  seems  likely  to  be  imitated.  It  is  felt  that 
whatever  may  be  the  mental  state  of  the  man  who 
commits  an  act  of  violence  or  fraud,  it  is  wholesome 
that  people  in  general,  who  draw  no  fine  distinctions, 
but  judge  others  by  themselves,  should  be  taught  by 
example  that  such  conduct  is  followed  by  moral  and 
legal  penalties.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  behavior 
is  so  evidently  remote  from  ordinary  habits  of  thought 
that  it  can  be  a  matter  only  of  pity  or  curiosity,  there 
is  no  occasion  to  do  anything  more  than  the  good  of 
the  person  affected  seems  to  require. 

The  same  analysis  applies  to  the  whole  question  of 
responsibility  or  irresponsibility.  It  is  a  matter  of 
imaginative   contact  and   personal  idea.     To   hold   a 

418 


PERSONAL  DEGENERACY 

man  responsible,  is  to  imagine  him  as  a  man  like  our- 
selves, having  similar  impulses  but  failing  to  control 
them  as  we  do,  or  at  least  as  we  feel  we  ought  to  do. 
We  think  of  doing  as  he  does,  find  it  wrong,  and  im- 
pute the  wrong  to  him.  The  irresponsible  person  is 
one  who  is  looked  upon  as  a  different  sort  of  being, 
not  human  with  reference  to  the  conduct  in  question, 
not  imaginable,  not  near  enough  to  us  to  be  the  ob- 
ject of  hostile  sentiment.  We  blame  the  former;  that 
is,  we  visit  him  with  a  sympathetic  resentment;  we 
condemn  that  part  of  ourselves  that  we  find  in  him. 
But  in  the  latter  we  do  not  find  ourselves  at  all. 

It  is  worth  noting  in  this  connection,  that  we  could 
not  altogether  cease  to  blame  others  without  ceasing 
to  blame  ourselves,  which  would  mean  moral  apathy. 
It  is  sometimes  thought  that  the  cool  analysis  of  such 
questions  as  this  tends  toward  indifferentism;  but  I 
do  not  see  that  this  is  the  case.  The  social  psychol- 
ogist finds  in  moral  sentiment  a  central  and  momen- 
tous fact  of  human  life,  and  if  perchance  he  does  not 
himself  feel  it  very  vividly,  he  should  have  the  candor 
to  confess  himself  so  much  the  less  a  man.  Indeed, 
if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an  indifferentist,  in  the 
sense  of  one  who  does  not  feel  any  cogency  in  moral 
sentiment,  he  must  be  quite  unsuited  to  the  pursuit 
of  social  or  moral  science,  because  he  lacks  power 
to  sympathize  with,  and  so  observe,  the  facts  upon 
which  this  sort  of  science  must  be  based. 

What  is  the  practical  effect  upon  responsibility  of 
the  view  that  wrong  does  not  originate  merely  in  the 

419 


HUMAN   NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

individual  will,  but  has  always  a  history  in  heredity 
and  social  transmission?  It  tends,  I  think,  not  to 
dimmish  responsibility  but  to  change  its  character, 
to  make  it  an  organic  whole,  including  every  individual 
whose  will  contributes  to  the  wrong  in  question.  It 
makes  more  people  responsible,  and  mitigates,  without 
removing,  the  blame  that  falls  upon  the  immediate 
wrong-doer.  When  a  boy  is  caught  stealing  brass 
fixtures  from  an  unfinished  house  the  judge  of  the 
Juvenile  Court  will  first  of  all  blame  the  boy,  but, 
far  from  stopping  there,  he  will  bring  into  court  also 
the  leader  of  the  gang  who  set  him  the  example,  and 
his  parents,  who  failed  to  give  him  suitable  care  and 
discipline.  The  judge  may  well  censure,  also,  the 
school  authorities  for  not  interesting  him  in  healthy 
work  and  recreation,  and  the  city  government  and 
influential  classes  for  failing  to  provide  a  better  en- 
vironment for  him  to  grow  up  in.  The  tendency  of 
any  study  of  indirect  causes  is  to  fix  more  and  more 
responsibility  upon  those  who  have  wealth,  knowledge, 
and  influence,  and  therefore  the  power  to  bring  a 
better  state  of  things  to  pass.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  see,  as  one  looks  into  these  questions,  that  there  is 
little  use  in  blaming  or  punishing  those  who  have 
been  brought  up  in  demoralizing  surroundings,  and 
that  the  chief  hope  of  improvement  is  in  arousing  the 
consciences  of  those  who  are  able  to  do  away  with 
such  surroundings  and  so  check  the  evil  at  its  source. 

Under  the  organic  view  punishment  is  not  done  away 
with:  it  has  its  uses  as  an  influence  upon  the  will, 

420 


PERSONAL   DEGENERACY 

upon  the  will  of  actual  wrong-doers  and  of  those  who 
might  become  such.  This  view  does,  however,  tend 
to  depreciate  the  importance  of  punishment  as  com- 
pared with  educational  and  constructive  methods.  If 
we  can  make  the  whole  process  healthy,  vice,  crime, 
and  the  like  will  be  kept  off  as  disease  is  from  a  healthy 
body. 

In  so  far  as  we  use  punishment  its  efficacy  depends 
mainly  upon  two  things: 

1.  It  must  be  evidently  just;  so  that  both  the 
offender  and  the  onlooker  can  see  that  it  is  what  so- 
ciety must  do  for  the  protection  of  its  members.  If 
arbitrary,  or  gratuitously  painful  or  humiliating,  it 
arouses  such  resentment  as  one  would  feel  at  being 
mauled  by  a  bully;  brutalizing  and  alienating  the 
offender.     Much  of  our  punishment  is  of  this  kind. 

2.  It  must  be  reasonably  certain.  Otherwise  those 
who  contemplate  it  will  take  the  chance.  Under  our 
present  methods  most  offenders  escape,  and  the  crim- 
inal class  regard  punishment  as  merely  one  of  the 
risks  of  a  somewhat  hazardous  occupation. 


421 


CHAPTER  XII 
FREEDOM 

THE  MEANING  OF  FREEDOM — FREEDOM  AND  DISCIPLINE — FREEDOM 
AS  A  PHASE  OF  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER — FREEDOM  INVOLVES  INCI- 
DENTAL STRAIN  AND  DEGENERACY 

Goethe  remarks  in  his  Autobiography  *  that  the 
word  freedom  has  so  fair  a  sound  that  we  cannot 
do  without  it  even  though  it  designate  an  error.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  a  word  inseparable  from  our  higher  senti- 
ments, and  if,  in  its  popular  use  at  the  present  day,  it 
has  no  precise  meaning,  there  is  so  much  the  more 
reason  why  we  should  try  to  give  it  one,  and  to  con- 
tinue its  use  as  a  symbol  of  something  that  mankind 
cherishes  and  strives  for. 

The  common  notion  of  freedom  is  negative,  that  is, 
it  is  a  notion  of  the  absence  of  constraint.  Starting 
with  the  popular  individualistic  view  of  things,  the 
social  order  is  thought  of  as  something  apart  from, 
and  more  or  less  a  hindrance  to,  a  man's  natural  de- 
velopment. There  is  an  assumption  that  an  ordinary 
person  is  self-sufficient  in  most  respects,  and  will  do 
very  well  if  he  is  only  left  alone.  But  there  is,  of 
course,  no  such  thing  as  the  absence  of  restraint,  in 
the  sense  of  social  limitations;  man  has  no  existence 
apart  from  a  social  order,  and  can  develop  his  per- 
sonality only  through  the  social  order,  and  in  the  same 
degree  that  it  is  developed.  A  freedom  consisting  in 
*  Aus  Meinem  Leben,  book  XI. 
422 


FREEDOM 

the  removal  of  limiting  conditions  is  inconceivable. 
If  the  word  is  to  have  any  definite  meaning  in  so- 
ciology, it  must  therefore  be  separated  from  the  idea 
of  a  fundamental  opposition  between  society  and  the 
individual,  and  made  to  signify  something  that  is  both 
individual  and  social.  To  do  this  it  is  not  necessary 
to  do  any  great  violence  to  accepted  ideas  of  a  practi- 
cal sort;  since  it  is  rather  in  theory  than  in  applica- 
tion that  the  popular  view  is  objectionable.  A  so- 
ciological interpretation  of  freedom  should  take  away 
nothing  worth  keeping  from  our  traditional  concep- 
tion of  it,  and  may  add  something  in  the  way  of  breadth, 
clearness,  and  productiveness. 

The  definition  of  freedom  naturally  arising  from  the 
chapters  that  have  gone  before  is  perhaps  this:  that 
it  is  opportunity  for  right  development,  for  development 
in  accordance  with  the  progressive  ideal  of  life  that 
we  have  in  conscience.  A  child  comes  into  the  world 
with  an  outfit  of  vague  tendencies,  for  all  definite 
unfolding  of  which  he  is  dependent  upon  social  condi- 
tions. If  cast  away  alone  on  a  desert  island  he  would, 
supposing  that  he  succeeded  in  living  at  all,  never 
attain  a  real  humanity,  would  never  know  speech, 
or  social  sentiment,  or  any  complex  thought.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  all  his  surroundings  are  from  the 
first  such  as  to  favor  the  enlargement  and  enrich- 
ment of  his  life,  he  may  attain  the  fullest  develop- 
ment possible  to  him  in  the  actual  state  of  the  world. 
In  so  far  as  the  social  conditions  have  this  favoring 
action  upon  him  he  may  be  said  to  be  free.  And  so 
every  person,  at  every  stage  of  his  growth,  is  free  or 

423 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

unfree  in  proportion  as  he  does  or  does  not  find  him- 
self in  the  midst  of  conditions  conducive  to  full  and 
harmonious  personal  development.  Thinking  in  this 
way  we  do  not  regard  the  individual  as  separable 
from  the  social  order  as  a  whole,  but  we  do  regard  him 
as  capable  of  occupying  any  one  of  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  positions  within  that  order,  some  of  them  more 
suitable  to  him  than  others. 

No  doubt  there  are  elements  of  vagueness  in  this 
conception.  What  is  full  and  harmonious  personal 
development?  What  is  the  right,  the  opportunity  to 
achieve  which  is  freedom?  The  possibilities  of  de- 
velopment are  infinitely  various,  and  unimaginable 
until  they  begin  to  be  realized,  so  that  it  would  ap- 
pear that  our  notion  gives  us  nothing  definite  to  go 
by  after  all.  This  is  largely  true:  development  can- 
not be  defined,  either  for  the  race  or  for  individuals, 
but  is  and  must  remain  an  ideal,  of  which  we  can  get 
only  partial  and  shifting  glimpses.  In  fact,  we  should 
cease  to  think  of  freedom  as  something  definite  and 
final,  that  can  be  grasped  and  held  fast  once  for  all, 
and  learn  to  regard  it  as  a  line  of  advance,  something 
progressively  appearing  out  of  the  invisible  and  de- 
fining itself,  like  the  forms  of  a  mountain  up  which 
one  is  climbing  in  a  mist.  This  vagueness  and  in- 
completeness are  only  what  we  meet  in  every  direc- 
tion when  we  attempt  to  define  our  ideals.  What  is 
progress?  What  is  right?  What  is  beauty?  What 
is  truth?  The  endeavor  to  produce  unmistakable  and 
final  definitions  of  these  things  is  now,  I  suppose, 
given  up,  and  we  have  come  to  recognize  that  the  good, 

424 


FREEDOM 

in  all  its  forms,  is  evolved  rather  than  achieved,  is  a 
process  rather  than  a  state. 

The  best  definition  of  freedom  is  perhaps  nothing 
other  than  the  most  helpful  way  of  thinking  about 
it;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  most  helpful  way  of 
thinking  about  it  is  to  regard  it  in  the  light  of  the  con- 
trast between  what  a  man  is  and  what  he  might  be, 
as  our  experience  of  life  enables  us  to  imagine  the 
two  states.  Ideas  of  this  sort  are  suggested  by  de- 
fining freedom  as  opportunity,  and  their  tendency  is 
to  stimulate  and  direct  practical  endeavor.  If  the 
word  helps  us  to  realize,  for  instance,  that  it  is  pos- 
sible to  make  healthy,  intelligent,  and  hopeful  chil- 
dren out  of  those  that  are  now  sickly,  dull,  and  un- 
happy, so  much  the  better.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
definition  of  it  as  letting  people  alone,  well  enough 
suited,  perhaps,  to  an  overgoverned  state  of  society, 
does  not  seem  especially  pertinent  to  our  time  and 
country. 

We  have  always  been  taught  by  philosophy  that 
the  various  forms  of  the  good  were  merely  different 
views  of  the  same  thing,  and  this  idea  is  certainly 
applicable  to  such  notions  as  those  of  freedom,  prog- 
ress, and  right.  Thus  freedom  may  be  regarded  as 
merely  the  individual  aspect  of  progress,  the  two  be- 
ing related  as  the  individual  and  the  social  order 
were  asserted  to  be  in  the  first  chapter,  and  no  more 
distinct  or  separable.  If  instead  of  contrasting  what 
a  particular  man  is  with  what  he  might  be,  we  do  the 
same  for  mankind  as  a  whole,  we  have  the  notion  of 
progress.     Progress  which  does  not  involve  liberation 

425 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  evidently  no  progress  at  all;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  freedom  that  is  not  part  of  the  general  onward 
movement  of  society  is  not  free  in  the  largest  sense. 
Again,  any  practicable  idea  of  freedom  must  connect 
it  with  some  standard  of  right,  in  which,  like  opposing 
claims  in  a  clearing-house,  the  divergent  tendencies 
of  each  person,  and  of  different  persons,  are  disci- 
plined and  reconciled.  The  wrong  is  the  unfree;  it 
is  that  which  tends,  on  the  whole,  to  restrict  personal 
development.  It  is  no  contribution  to  freedom  to 
turn  loose  the  insane  or  the  criminal,  or  to  allow  chil- 
dren to  run  on  the  streets  instead  of  going  to  school. 
The  only  test  of  all  these  things — of  right,  freedom, 
progress,  and  the  like — is  the  instructed  conscience; 
just  as  the  only  test  of  beauty  is  a  trained  aesthetic 
sense,  which  is  a  mental  conclusion  of  much  the  same 
sort  as  conscience. 

So  far  as  discipline  is  concerned,  freedom  means 
not  its  absence  but  the  use  of  higher  and  more  ra- 
tional forms  as  contrasted  with  those  that  are  lower 
or  less  rational.  A  free  discipline  controls  the  in- 
dividual by  appealing  to  his  reason  and  conscience, 
and  therefore  to  his  self-respect;  while  an  unfree 
control  works  upon  some  lower  phase  of  the  mind, 
and  so  tends  to  degrade  him.  It  is  freedom  to  be 
disciplined  in  as  rational  a  manner  as  you  are  fit  for. 

Thus  freedom  is  relative  to  the  particular  persons 
and  states  who  are  to  enjoy  it,  some  individuals  within 
any  society,  and  some  societies  as  wholes,  being  capa- 
ble of  a  higher  sort  of  response  than  others. 

426 


FREEDOM 

I  can  perceive,  during  my  own  lifetime,  an  actual 
growth  of  freedom  in  most  of  our  institutions.  Family 
discipline  has  become  more  a  matter  of  persuasion  and 
example,  less  one  of  mere  authority  and  the  rod.  In 
the  school,  mechanical  modes  of  teaching,  enlivened 
by  punishment,  have  given  way  to  sympathy,  interest, 
and  emulation.  In  the  church  we  are  no  longer  co- 
erced by  dogma,  forms,  and  the  fear  of  Hell,  but  are 
persuaded  through  our  intelligence,  sympathy,  and 
desire  for  service.  Governments,  on  the  whole,  rely 
more  upon  education,  investigation,  and  public  opin- 
ion, less  upon  the  military  and  police  functions.  In 
armies  and  navies  harsh  discipline  and  awe  of  rank  are 
in  part  supplanted  by  appeals  to  patriotism,  fellow- 
ship, and  emulation,  and  by  cultivating  that  spiritual 
condition  known  as  morale.  In  prisons  there  is  an 
increase  of  methods  that,  by  appealing  to  intelligence, 
responsibility,  and  honor,  tend  to  elevate  rather  than 
degrade  the  offender. 

The  growth  of  freedom  is  most  questionable  in  the 
industrial  system;  but  even  here  we  have  ideals,  agita- 
tion, and  experiments  in  the  free  participation  of  the 
individual  in  the  process.  These  give  us  hope  that 
the  present  organization — for  the  most  part  unfree — 
may  gradually  be  liberalized. 

The  social  order  is  antithetical  to  freedom  only  in 
so  far  as  it  is  a  bad  one.  Freedom  can  exist  only  in 
and  through  a  social  order,  and  must  be  increased  by 
all  the  healthy  growth  of  the  latter.  It  is  only  in  a 
large  and  complex  social  system  that  any  advanced 

427 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

degree  of  it  is  possible,  because  nothing  else  can  sup- 
ply the  multifarious  opportunities  by  means  of  which 
all  sorts  of  persons  can  work  out  a  congenial  develop- 
ment through  the  choice  of  influences. 

In  so  far  as  we  have  freedom  in  the  United  States 
at  the  present  time,  in  what  does  it  consist?  Evi- 
dently, it  seems  to  me,  in  the  access  to  a  great  number 
and  variety  of  influences  by  whose  progressive  selec- 
tion and  assimilation  a  child  may  become,  within 
vague  limits  set  by  the  general  state  of  our  society,  the 
best  that  he  is  naturally  fitted  to  become.  It  con- 
sists, to  begin  with  infancy,  in  a  good  family  life,  in 
intelligent  nurture  and  training,  adapted  to  the  special 
traits  of  character  which  every  child  manifests  from 
the  first  week  of  life.  Then  it  involves  good  school- 
ing, admitting  the  child  through  books  and  teachers 
to  a  rich  selection  from  the  accumulated  influences  of 
the  best  minds  of  the  past.  Free  technical  and  pro- 
fessional education,  so  far  as  it  exists,  contributes  to 
it,  also  the  facility  of  travel,  bringing  him  in  contact 
with  significant  persons  from  all  over  the  world; 
public  libraries,  magazines,  good  newspapers,  and  so 
on.  Whatever  enlarges  his  field  of  selection  without 
permanently  confusing  him  adds  to  his  liberty.  In 
fact,  institutions — government,  churches,  industries, 
and  the  like — have  properly  no  other  function  than 
to  contribute  to  human  freedom;  and  in  so  far  as  they 
fail,  on  the  whole,  to  perform  this  function,  they  are 
wrong  and  need  reconstruction. 

Although  a  high  degree  of  freedom  can  exist  only 
through  a  complex  social  order,  it  by  no  means  fol- 

428 


FREEDOM 

lows  that  every  complex  social  order  is  free.  On  the 
contrary,  it  has  more  often  been  true  in  the  past  that 
very  large  and  intricately  organized  states,  like  the 
Roman  Empire,  were  constructed  on  a  comparatively 
mechanical  or  unfree  principle.  And  in  our  own  time 
a  vast  and  complex  empire,  like  Russia  or  China,  may 
be  less  free  than  the  simplest  English-speaking  col- 
ony. There  are  serious  objections  to  identifying 
progress,  as  Herbert  Spencer  sometimes  appears  to 
do,  with  the  mere  differentiation  and  co-ordination  of 
social  functions.  But  the  example  of  the  United 
States,  which  is  perhaps  on  the  whole  the  most  in- 
tricately differentiated  and  co-ordinated  state  that 
ever  existed,  shows  that  complexity  is  not  inconsistent 
with  freedom.  To  enter  fully  into  this  matter  would 
require  a  more  careful  examination  of  the  institutional 
aspect  of  life  than  I  wish  to  undertake  at  present; 
but  I  hold  that  the  possibility  of  organizing  large  and 
complex  societies  on  a  free  principle  depends  upon 
the  quickness  and  facility  of  communication,  and  so 
has  come  to  exist  only  in  recent  times.  The  great 
states  of  earlier  history  were  necessarily  somewhat 
mechanical  in  structure. 

It  happens  from  time  to  time  in  every  complex  and 
active  society,  that  certain  persons  feel  the  com- 
plexity and  insistence  as  a  tangle,  and  seek  freedom 
in  retirement,  as  Thoreau  sought  it  at  Walden  Pond. 
They  do  not,  however,  in  this  manner  escape  from 
the  social  institutions  of  their  time,  nor  do  they  really 
mean  to  do  so;  what  they  gain,  if  they  are  successful, 
is  a  saner  relation  to  them.     Thoreau  in  his  hut  re- 

429 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

mained  as  truly  a  member  of  society,  as  dependent  for 
suggestion  upon  his  books,  his  friends,  and  his  per- 
sonal memories,  and  upon  verbal  expression  for  his 
sense  of  self,  as  did  Emerson  in  Concord  or  Lowell 
in  Cambridge;  and  I  imagine  that  if  he  had  cared  to 
discuss  the  matter  he  would  have  admitted  that  this 
was  the  case.  Indeed,  the  idea  of  Thoreau  as  a  re- 
cluse was  not,  I  think,  his  own  idea,  but  has  been 
attached  to  him  by  superficial  observers  of  his  life. 
Although  he  was  a  dissenter  from  the  state  and  the 
church  of  his  time,  his  career  would  have  been  im- 
possible without  those  institutions,  without  Harvard 
College,  for  instance,  which  was  a  joint  product  of  the 
two.  He  worked  out  his  personal  development  through 
congenial  influences  selected  from  the  life  of  his  time, 
very  much  as  others  do.  He  simply  had  peculiar  ten- 
dencies which  he  developed  in  a  peculiar  way,  espe- 
cially by  avoiding  a  gregarious  mode  of  life  unsuited 
to  his  temperament.  He  was  free  through  the  social 
order,  not  outside  of  it,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of 
Edward  Fitzgerald  and  other  seclusive  spirits.  No 
doubt  the  commonplace  life  of  the  day  is  a  sort  of 
slavery  for  many  sensitive  minds  that  have  not,  like 
these,  the  resolution  to  escape  from  it  into  a  calmer 
and  broader  atmosphere. 

Since  freedom  is  not  a  fixed  thing  that  can  be  grasped 
and  held  once  for  all,  but  a  growth,  any  particular 
society,  such  as  our  own,  always  appears  partly  free 
and  partly  unfree.  In  so  far  as  it  favors,  in  every 
child,  the  development  of  his  highest  possibilities,  it 

430 


FREEDOM 

is  free,  but  where  it  falls  short  of  this  it  is  not.  So 
far  as  children  are  ill-nurtured  or  ill-taught,  as  family 
training  is  bad,  the  schools  inefficient,  the  local  gov- 
ernment ill-administered,  public  libraries  lacking,  or 
private  associations  for  various  sorts  of  culture  de- 
ficient, in  so  far  the  people  are  unfree.  A  child  born 
in  a  slum,  brought  up  in  a  demoralized  family,  and  put 
at  some  confining  and  mentally  deadening  work  when 
ten  or  twelve  years  old,  is  no  more  free  to  be  healthy, 
wise,  and  moral  than  a  Chinese  child  is  free  to  read 
Shakespeare.  Every  social  ill  involves  the  enslave- 
ment of  individuals. 

This  idea  of  freedom  is  quite  in  accord  with  a  gen- 
eral, though  vague,  sentiment  among  us;  it  is  an  idea 
of  fair  play,  of  giving  every  one  a  chance;  and  nothing 
arouses  more  general  and  active  indignation  among 
our  people  than  the  belief  that  some  one  or  some 
class  is  not  getting  a  fair  chance.  There  seems,  how- 
ever, to  be  too  great  complacency  in  the  way  in  which 
the  present  state  of  things  is  interpreted,  a  tendency 
to  assume  that  freedom  has  been  achieved  once  for 
all  by  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  popular 
suffrage,  and  that  little  remains  but  to  let  each  person 
realize  the  general  blessing  to  the  best  of  his  ability. 
It  is  well  to  recognize  that  the  freedom  which  we 
nominally  worship  is  never  more  than  partly  achieved, 
and  is  every  day  threatened  by  new  encroachments, 
that  the  right  to  vote  is  only  one  phase  of  it,  and 
possibly,  under  present  conditions,  not  the  most  im- 
portant phase,  and  that  we  can  maintain  and  increase 

431 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

it  only  by  a  sober  and  determined  application  of  our 
best  thought  and  endeavor.  Those  lines  of  Lowell's 
"Commemoration  Ode"  are  always  applicable: 

" — the  soft  Ideal  that  we  wooed 
Confronts  us  fiercely,  foe-beset,  pursued, 
And  cries  reproachful:  Was  it  then  my  praise, 
And  not  myself  was  loved?     Prove  now  thy  truth. 
I  claim  of  thee  the  promise  of  thy  youth." 

In  our  view  of  freedom  we  have  a  right  to  survey 
all  times  and  countries  and  from  them  form  for  our 
own  social  order  an  ideal  condition,  which  shall  offer 
to  each  individual  all  the  encouragements  to  growth 
and  culture  that  the  world  has  ever  or  anywhere  en- 
joyed. Any  narrowness  or  lack  of  symmetry  in  life 
in  general  is  reflected  in  the  contraction  or  warping 
of  personal  development,  and  so  constitutes  a  lack  of 
freedom.  The  social  order  should  not  exaggerate  one 
or  a  few  aspects  of  human  nature  at  the  expense  of 
others,  but  extend  its  invitations  to  all  our  higher 
tendencies.  Thus  the  excessive  preoccupation  of  the 
nineteenth  century  with  material  production  and 
physical  science  may  be  regarded  as  a  partial  enslave- 
ment of  the  spiritual  and  aesthetic  sides  of  humanity, 
from  which  we  are  now  struggling  to  escape.  The 
freedom  of  the  future  must,  it  would  seem,  call  more 
and  more  for  a  various,  rich,  and  tolerant  environ- 
ment, in  which  all  sorts  of  persons  may  build  them- 
selves up  by  selective  development.  The  day  for  any 
sort  of  dogmatism  and  coercive  uniformity  appears  to 
be  past,  and  it  will  be  practicable  to  leave  people 

432 


FREEDOM 

more  and  more  to  control  by  a  conscience  reflecting 
the  moral  opinion  of  the  group  to  which  their  inclina- 
tion and  capacity  attach  them. 

The  substitution  of  higher  forms  of  control  for 
lower,  the  offering  more  alternatives  and  trusting  the 
mind  to  make  a  right  selection,  involves,  of  course, 
an  increased  moral  strain  upon  individuals.  Now 
this  increase  of  moral  strain  is  not  in  all  cases  exactly 
proportioned  to  the  ability  to  bear  it  well;  and  when 
it  is  not  well  borne  the  effect  upon  character  is  more 
or  less  destructive,  so  that  something  in  the  way  of 
degeneracy  results. 

Consequently  every  general  increase  of  freedom  is 
accompanied  by  some  degeneracy,  attributable  to  the 
same  causes  as  the  freedom.  This  is  very  plainly  to 
be  seen  at  the  present  time,  which  is  one,  on  the  whole, 
of  rapid  increase  of  freedom.  Family  life  and  the 
condition  of  women  and  children  have  been  growing 
freer  and  better,  but  along  with  this  we  have  the 
increase  of  divorce  and  of  spoiled  children.  Democ- 
racy in  the  state  has  its  own  peculiar  evils,  as  we  all 
know;  and  in  the  church  the  decay  of  dogmatism  and 
unreasoning  faith,  a  moral  advance  on  the  whole,  has 
nevertheless  caused  a  good  many  moral  failures.  In 
much  the  same  way  the  enfranchisement  of  the  ne- 
groes is  believed  to  have  caused  an  increase  of  insanity 
among  them,  and  the  growth  of  suicide  in  all  coun- 
tries seems  to  be  due  in  part  to  the  strain  of  a  more 
complex  society.  It  is  not  true,  exactly,  that  freedom 
itself  causes  degeneracy,  because  if  one  is  subjected  to 

433 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

more  strain  than  is  good  for  him  his  real  freedom  is 
rather  contracted  than  enlarged,  but  it  should  rather 
be  said  that  any  movement  which  has  increase  of  free- 
dom for  its  general  effect  can  never  be  so  regulated  as 
to  have  only  this  effect,  but  is  sure  to  act  upon  some  in 
an  opposite  manner. 

Nor  is  it  reasonable  to  sit  back  and  say  that  this 
incidental  demoralization  is  inevitable,  a  fixed  price 
of  progress.  On  the  contrary,  although  it  can  never 
be  altogether  dispensed  with,  it  can  be  indefinitely 
reduced,  and  every  social  institution  or  influence  that 
tends  to  adapt  the  stress  of  civilization  to  the  strength 
of  the  individual  does  reduce  it  in  some  measure. 


434 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

ON  THE  INTRODUCTION 

1.  What  idea  had  you  already  formed  as  to  what  Evolu- 
tion is,  and  how  does  it  compare  with  the  statement  in  the 
text? 

2.  What  do  you  think  of  the  question  whether  a  belief 
in  a  common  ancestry  with  other  animals  is  degrading? 

3.  Give  examples  of  social  and  hereditary  transmission 
among  animals,  showing  how  you  distinguish  one  from  the 
other. 

4.  What  ways  can  you  think  of  to  show  that  certain  things 
in  human  life  must  come  from  heredity  and  others  from  social 
transmission  ? 

5.  Do  you  agree  that  everything  in  our  life  has  a  history 
in  germ-plasm,  or  environment,  or  both?  Explain  and 
defend  your  view. 

6.  Do  you  think  that  you  or  any  one  you  know  have 
natural  talents  that  have  failed  of  development  because  of 
unfavorable  environment?  What  do  you  think  of  the  view 
that  many  men  of  genius  are  lost  to  the  world  for  this  rea- 
son? 

7.  What,  from  your  observation,  is  the  popular  view  re- 
garding the  inheritance  of  acquired  traits?  Give  the  facts 
commonly  alleged  and  your  own  interpretation  of  them. 

8.  Do  you  think  the  view  that  acquired  traits  are  not 
inherited  is  hopeful  or  otherwise  as  regards  the  improvement 
of  society  ?    How  does  it  affect  the  method  of  improvement  ? 

9.  Do  you  think  that  "selection,"  in  the  evolutionary 
sense,  implies  the  action  of  will?     Does  it  exclude  will? 

10.  Just  what  is  it  that  "survives"  in  an  evolutionary 
sense?  The  individual?  What  else?  In  general  what 
is  the  test  of  biological  "survival"  ? 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

11.  What  illustrations  of  your  own  can  you  give  of  the 
operation  of  "natural  selection"  upon  human  life? 

12.  Many  think  that  this  operation  is  less  favorable  in 
civilized  than  in  savage  life.  What  can  you  say  for  or  against 
this  view? 

13.  Some  hold  that  the  an ti- tuberculosis  movement  is 
harmful  because  it  preserves  weakly  types  that  were  better 
eliminated  by  the  disease.    What  do  you  think? 

14.  What  do  you  know  of  that  has  been  done,  by  law  or 
otherwise,  to  promote  eugenics? 

15.  Do  you  know  of  any  degenerate  family  stocks?  If 
so,  describe  them.  In  just  what  ways  are  such  families 
harmful  ? 

16.  Just  what  would  you  understand  by  "race-suicide," 
and  in  what  respects  does  it  seem  to  you  a  serious  problem  ? 

17.  How  may  it  be  argued  that  democracy  is  unfavorable 
to  eugenics?    What  is  your  view? 

18.  What  reasons  can  be  given  for  and  against  the  proposi- 
tion that  the  upper  economic  class  is  also  the  class  of  high- 
est eugenic  value?  What  are  the  practical  bearings  of  the 
question  ? 

19.  Do  you  think  that  the  increase  of  races  must  result 
in  conflict  among  them  for  survival?  Is  interracial  war 
inevitable  ? 

20.  What  do  you  think  of  a  proposal  that  immigration 
tests  should  be  determined  by  a  committee  of  biologists? 

21.  Give  your  view  as  to  the  relation  of  heredity  to  social 
progress. 

22.  What  do  you  think  of  the  following:  "Hunger  and 
other  physical  appetites  are  hereditary,  but  the  intellectual 
and  moral  desires  are  of  social  origin  "  ? 

23.  Would  a  complete  knowledge  of  heredity  and  envi- 
ronment enable  us  to  predict  conduct  as  an  astronomer 
predicts  an  eclipse? 

24.  How  would  you  answer  the  question,  Which  is  stronger, 
heredity  or  environment? 

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STUDY  QUESTIONS 

25.  Show  just  how  the  question  of  heredity  versus  environ- 
ment might  arise  in  connection  with  a  criminal;  with  a  man 
of  genius.  Can  you  think  of  cases  where  it  might  arise 
other  than  those  suggested  in  the  text? 

26.  Illustrate  from  your  observation  the  difference  in 
teachability  between  human  and  animal  heredity.  How  did 
this  difference  come  about? 

27.  How  is  the  helplessness  of  human  infants  related  to 
the  nature  of  our  social  life? 

28.  Name  six  well-known  animals  in  what  you  regard  as 
the  order  of  their  teachability.     What  tests  do  you  use? 

29.  What  was  Darwin's  conception  of  instinct?  What 
disagreement  is  there  in  the  use  of  the  word  as  applied  to 
man,  and  how  did  this  arise? 

30.  Give  some  examples,  not  mentioned  in  the  text,  of 
human  instinct,  taking  the  word  in  its  broader  meaning. 
Show  why  you  think  them  instinctive. 

31.  What  are  the  chief  obstacles  to  a  satisfactory  under- 
standing of  human  instinct? 

32.  Have  you  noticed  any  examples  of  the  fallacious  use 
of  "instincts"  in  explaining  human  behavior? 

33.  What  is  meant  by  calling  the  explanation  of  human 
behavior  by  instinct  alone  "particularism"?  Can  you  give 
other  examples  of  this  fallacy? 

34.  Frame  a  definition  of  reason  that  will  bring  out  its 
relation  to  instinct. 

35.  How  would  you  answer  the  question,  Are  the  seemingly 
intelligent  actions  of  a  dog  reasoned  or  instinctive? 

36.  Can  you  show  that  the  social  life  of  man  requires 
reason?  Ants  also  have  a  social  life:  how  do  they  get  along 
without  reason? 

37.  "Historical  changes  are  mainly  social  rather  than 
biological."  Just  what  does  this  mean?  Can  you  think 
of  historical  changes  that  are  biological? 

38.  Frame  a  definition  of  "human  nature."  What  ob- 
jection is  there  to  restricting  it  to  hereditary  traits? 

437 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

39.  Discuss  the  following:  "There  is  no  use  in  trying  to 
abolish  war,  sexual  vice,  or  pecuniary  greed.  You  cannot 
change  human  nature." 

ON  CHAPTER  I 

1.  What  do  you  understand  by  an  "organic"  relation 
between  society  and  the  individual?  Give  your  own  il- 
lustrations. 

2.  What  do  you  think  of  the  proposition,  "A  man  is  so- 
cial in  so  far  as  he  is  like  others"? 

3.  What  examples  have  you  noticed  of  the  fallacious  use 
of  "individual,"  "social,"  and  cognate  words? 

4.  "The  criminal  is  an  anti-social  individual."  In  just 
what  sense  is  this  true?  in  what  sense  false? 

5.  Do  you  think  that  primitive  men  were  in  any  sense 
less  social  than  modern  men?     Explain  j^our  view. 

6.  Explain  the  statement  that  a  group  is  in  one  sense  more 
than  the  sum  of  the  individuals,  and  illustrate  from  college 
life. 

7.  What  instances  can  you  give  of  real  or  apparent  separa- 
tion from  society?  What  is  the  effect  upon  the  individual? 
What  do  you  think  would  be  the  effect  upon  yourself  of  a 
year  on  a  desert  island? 

8.  Criticise  "To  reform  society  we  must  first  reform  indi- 
viduals"; also,  "Men  will  reform  if  we  reform  their  environ- 
ment."    How  would  you  state  it? 

9.  In  what  sense  is  man's  heredity  a  product  of  society? 
How  does  this  apply  to  the  human  hand?  to  the  voice? 

10.  What  would  you  understand  by  "organic"  freedom? 
How  does  it  differ  from  the  common  idea  of  freedom? 

11.  How  do  you  think  that  our  conduct  would  be  affected 
by  our  accepting  the  "  organic  "  idea  ? 


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STUDY  QUESTIONS 

ON  CHAPTER  II 

1.  Show  by  examples  what  is  meant  by  suggestion  and 
distinguish  it  from  imitation.     How  is  it  related  to  choice? 

2.  How  does  the  sociological  view  of  will  differ  from  the 
popular  or  "individualistic"  view?  Do  you  think  it  makes 
the  will  less  important? 

3.  Why  do  children  seem  more  imitative  than  adults? 

4.  Why  are  children  not  imitative  during  the  first  six 
months  of  life? 

5.  Give  examples  from  your  own  observation  of  uncon- 
scious control  by  suggestion. 

6.  Why  do  other  people  rather  than  ourselves  perceive 
our  local  accent?  Give  other  illustrations  of  the  principle 
involved. 

7.  In  just  what  sense  is  the  individual  controlled  by  his 
environment?     In  just  what  sense  is  he  free? 

8.  What  contrast,  if  any,  do  you  notice  between  the  trend 
of  your  mind  at  home  and  at  the  University?  What  do 
you  ascribe  it  to? 

9.  What  examples  can  you  give  of  the  harmful  or  benefi- 
cial influences  of  class  environment?  How  would  you  ob- 
viate the  former? 

10.  How  do  you  think  the  Great  War  has  affected  American 
national  consciousness? 

11.  Is  the  "spirit  of  the  age"  a  real  thing?  If  so,  what  is 
its  nature  and  importance? 

12.  How  does  social  change  affect  choice?  Illustrate 
from  your  own  experience. 

13.  How  might  too  much  change  be  harmful  to  the  char- 
acter? 

14.  Describe  any  instances  you  have  seen  of  the  operation 
of  suggestion  on  a  crowd. 

15.  Compare  the  suggestibility  of  a  freshman  with  that 
of  a  senior,  giving  illustrations  and  reasons. 

16.  What  can  you  say  for  or  against  the  use  of  emo- 
tional suggestion  as  a  means  of  religious  conversion? 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

17.  Why  does  exhaustion  render  one  suggestible?  Give 
any  illustrations  you  may  have  observed. 

18.  Discuss  "worry"  as  a  phase  of  suggestibility.  How 
would  you  combat  it? 

19.  Give  examples,  if  you  can,  showing  how  your  own 
habits  influence  your  suggestibility. 

20.  In  view  of  the  automatic  tendency  of  suggestion,  how 
shall  we  explain  new  movements  in  social  life? 

ON  CHAPTER  III 

1.  What  facts  have  you  observed  bearing  upon  the  social 
development  of  children  ?     How  do  you  interpret  them  ? 

2.  Have  you  ever  practised  imaginary  companionship? 
Do  you  now?     Describe  your  experience. 

3.  What  advantage  has  the  dialogue  form  in  literature? 
What  writers  can  you  mention  that  use  it? 

4.  Is  it  true  that  an  artist  cannot  create  without  an  audi- 
ence?    Give  your  opinion,  with  reasons. 

5.  How  do  you  reconcile  a  love  of  solitude  with  the  social 
nature  of  the  human  mind? 

6.  What  sort  of  thoughts  and  feelings  could  one  have  who 
grew  up  quite  apart  from  human  society?  Do  you  know 
any  facts  bearing  on  this? 

7.  What  do  we  think  of  when  we  think  of  a  person? 

8.  Observe  your  own  method  of  estimating  a  strange  per- 
son and  describe  it. 

9.  How  is  personality  depicted  by  a  painter?  an  actor? 
a  novelist?     How  does  a  writer  impart  his  own  personality? 

10.  What  are  sentiments  and  how  are  they  acquired? 
Illustrate,  showing  their  relation  to  instinct  and  intercourse. 

11.  "Society  is  a  relation  among  personal  ideas."  Is  this 
intelligible  to  you?    Explain  it  in  some  concrete  manner. 

12.  How  are  we  justified  in  saying  that  the  test  of  social 
reality  is  mental  rather  than  physical? 

13.  What  is  meant  by  saying  that  the  sociologist  must 
"imagine  imaginations"? 

440 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

14.  Give  original  illustrations  of  the  social  reality  of  in- 
corporeal persons. 

15.  What  advantage  may  fiction  have  over  "real  life"  as 
a  means  of  social  culture?     What  advantages  has  the  latter? 

16.  Explain  "Social  persons  are  not  mutually  exclusive." 

17.  Can  you  accept  the  view  that  the  idea  of  one's  self  is 
not  separable  from  the  idea  of  other  persons?  Explain 
this. 

18.  Why  cannot  sociology  be  primarily  a  science  of  weights 
and  measures? 


ON  CHAPTER  IV 

1.  What  is  meant  by  "sympathy"  here?  What  synony- 
mous expressions  can  you  think  of?  How  do  we  acquire 
sympathy  ? 

2.  What  is  your  experience  regarding  sympathy  with  sen- 
sation, as  distinguished  from  sympathy  with  thought  and 
sentiment? 

3.  "Sympathy  is  a  measure  of  personality."  Give  illus- 
trations from  your  observation  or  reading. 

4.  What  argument  might  be  advanced  to  show  that  a 
strong  personality  must  also  be  a  good  one?  What  is  your 
own  view? 

5.  Analyze  your  own  idea  of  a  "good"  or  "bad"  person. 
How  does  it  compare  with  the  view  suggested  in  the  text? 

6.  In  what  sense  are  the  insane  egotistic,  and  why? 

7.  What  differences  have  you  observed  as  to  sympathy 
between  country  people  and  city  people?  Between  busi- 
ness men,  professional  men,  and  hand- workers  ? 

8.  How,  in  your  opinion,  can  sympathy  between  classes 
be  increased? 

9.  Modern  life  is  highly  specialized.  How,  in  your  ob- 
servation, does  this  affect  the  sympathies  of  the  individual? 

10.  What  does  culture  mean  in  terms  of  sympathy?  What 
sort  of  education  will  give  it? 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

11.  How  is  the  rapid  increase  in  the  use  of  automatic  tools 
likely  to  affect  personality? 

12.  What  degree  or  kind  of  likeness,  judging  from  your 
experience,  is  favorable  to  friendship? 

13.  What  ground  is  there  for  thinking  that  we  may  have 
too  much  sympathy?     Can  you  give  illustrations? 

14.  "Our  mental  life  is  a  work  of  art."  In  what  sense? 
Do  you  agree? 

15.  How  is  love,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  related 
to  sympathy?  to  the  self? 

16.  Do  you  think  it  true  that  the  social  order  is  personal 
intercourse  viewed  as  a  whole?  How  would  you  apply 
the  idea  to  institutions  like  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  ? 


ON  CHAPTER  V 

1.  How  would  you  have  defined  the  word  "self"  before 
reading  this  chapter?  What  change  would  you  make  after 
doing  so? 

2.  Do  you  think  it  likely  that  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"I"  is  developed  from  a  special  sort  of  instinctive  feeling? 
If  so,  explain  the  process. 

3.  Does  "I"  usually  mean  the  body?  If  not,  what,  in 
general,  does  it  mean?     Give  examples. 

4.  Explain  and  illustrate  the  social  function  of  the  self- 
expressive  impulse. 

5.  Give  half-a-dozen  examples  of  the  use  of  "I"  in  various 
connections,  showing  that  it  always  has  a  social  reference. 

6.  How  can  you  explain  the  application  of  "I"  to  inani- 
mate objects,  like  a  ball?  Can  you  think  of  original  ex- 
amples ? 

7.  Explain  the  "looking-glass  self"  and  give  your  esti- 
mate of  its  practical  importance. 

8.  Is  it  true  that  the  self  is  moulded  by  social  conditions 
and  varies  with  them?     Show  this  from  your  own  observa- 

442 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

tion.     What  do  you  think  is  shown  by  the  case,  cited  in  the 
text,  of  mediaeval  ascetics? 

9.  How  does  the  self  grow  and  what  happens  when  it 
stops  growing? 

10.  How  do  children  learn  the  use  of  "I"?  Can  you  con- 
tribute observations  of  your  own? 

11.  Describe,  preferably  from  your  observation,  some 
aspects  of  the  growth  of  the  reflected  self  in  childhood  and 
youth. 

12.  What  differences  have  you  noted  between  boys  and 
girls,  or  men  and  women,  regarding  the  social  self? 

13.  Do  you  think  that  people  are  usually  ignorant  of 
such  facts  as  are  discussed  in  this  chapter?     If  so,  why? 

14.  Explain  how  a  group  self  is  developed  and  give  ex- 
amples. 

15.  What  kind  of  a  self  would  you  wish  your  country  to 
have?     How  would  you  foster  such  a  self? 


ON  CHAPTER  VI 

1.  Compare  the  conception  of  selfishness  given  in  the 
text  with  your  previous  idea  of  the  matter.  What  do  you 
think  of  it? 

2.  When  may  one  talk  about  himself  without  giving  just 
offense? 

3.  "Every  productive  mind  must  have  intense  self-feel- 
ing." Do  you  agree?  Show  why,  or  why  not,  giving  illus- 
trations from  your  observation. 

4.  Explain  the  difference  between  vanity  and  pride  as 
attitudes  of  the  self.  Think  of  one  or  more  persons  you 
know  and  describe  them  from  this  point  of  view.  Explain 
what  you  would  regard  as  a  healthy  attitude. 

5.  Just  what,  in  your  opinion,  were  the  motives  that  led 
so  many  to  sacrifice  their  lives  in  the  Great  War? 

6.  It  is  common,  nowadays,  to  depreciate  humility. 
What  defense  of  it,  if  any,  can  you  make? 

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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

7.  Most  people  find  their  own  self  a  problem.  Can  you 
illustrate  from  your  experience  or  observation? 

8.  Explain  withdrawal  as  a  remedy  for  a  troubled  self. 
When  and  how  far  do  you  think  it  expedient  or  effective? 

9.  Many  would  say  that  the  transformation  of  the  self 
into  something  larger  and  higher  is  the  great  enterprise  of 
life.  What  is  your  view?  Describe  and  discuss  a  concrete 
problem. 

10.  What  original  examples  can  you  give  of  the  effect  of 
personal  abnormality  or  incongruity  upon  self-consciousness? 

11.  Show,  from  your  own  observation,  just  how  the 
painful  self-feeling  of  individuals  or  classes  may  create  or 
embitter  social  antagonisms. 


ON  CHAPTER  VII 

1.  Describe  the  development  of  anger  from  animal  forms 
into  social  and  rational  forms.  Just  what  is  the  difference, 
as  regards  what  makes  us  angry? 

2.  What  is  meant  by  calling  resentment  "hostile  sym- 
pathy?" 

3.  May  resentment  be  socially  valuable?  Illustrate  from 
college  life. 

4.  Do  you  think  a  teacher  should  show  resentment  at 
disorder  in  the  classroom?     If  so,  how? 

5.  A  feeble-minded  person  and  a  saint  are  alike  in  showing 
no  resentment  at  an  insult;  what  is  the  difference? 

6.  What  defense  can  you  make  of  the  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance  ? 

7.  What  do  you  think  should  be  the  aim  of  a  reasonable 
person  as  regards  the  control  of  his  own  resentments? 

8.  What  is  your  observation  as  to  whether  hostile  feeling 
is  painful  or  not? 

9.  How  is  resentment  related  to  accepted  rules  or  prin- 
ciples? 

10.  Show,  with  your  own  illustrations,  that  fear  may  be 

444 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

social  or  merely  instinctive,  harmful  or  useful,  in  the  same 
way  as  hostility. 

11.  Select  some  other  instinctive  emotion  and  show  that 
it  undergoes  transformations  similar  to  those  of  anger  and 
fear. 

ON  CHAPTER  VIII 

1.  Give  an  example  of  conformity  from  your  observation 
and  analyze  the  motives.  The  same  for  non-conformity. 
How  is  each  related  to  the  social  self  ? 

2.  Which  of  the  two,  conformity  or  non-conformity,  do 
you  think  needs  more  to  be  cultivated,  and  why? 

3.  Intolerance  or  the  "tyranny  of  the  majority"  has  al- 
ways been  regarded  as  a  danger  to  democracy.  Do  you 
think  it  real?  What  instances  have  you  observed?  How 
did  the  makers  of  our  Constitution  provide  against  it? 

4.  How  is  non-conformity  a  "remoter  conformity?"  Can 
you  give  any  instances  that  you  think  are  not  so? 

5.  In  the  case  of  the  Salvation  Army,  what  advantages 
and  disadvantages  are  there  in  wearing  a  uniform? 

6.  How  is  rivalry  related  to  the  self  and  just  why  is  it  so 
powerful  a  motive? 

7.  Show,  from  your  own  observation,  how  specialized 
groups  may  develop  excellence  through  rivalry  in  service. 

8.  Aside  from  the  question  of  pay,  what  are  the  conditions 
under  which  a  man  is  likely  to  do  his  best  work? 

9.  What  light  does  a  study  of  emulation  throw  upon  the 
labor  question?    How  does  the  social  self  come  in? 

10.  Explain  and  illustrate  the  action  of  hero-worship  in 
the  growth  of  the  young.  What  ill  effects,  if  any,  have  you 
observed  ? 

11.  What  part  does  hero-worship  play  in  religion? 


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HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 
ON  CHAPTER  IX 

1.  Just  what  does  the  leader  do  for  the  follower?  Ex- 
plain carefully,  with  your  own  illustrations,  the  psychology 
of  the  matter. 

2.  Can  you  distinguish  various  types  of  leaders?  How 
would  you  classify  them? 

3.  Why  are  boys  apt  to  make  heroes  of  criminals,  and  how 
can  better  ideas  be  implanted? 

4.  What,  in  general,  are  the  traits  essential  to  a  leader, 
and  why?     Give  your  own  illustrations. 

5.  Have  you  been  greatly  influenced  by  the  personality  of 
any  author  or  artist?  If  so,  can  you  analyze  the  source  of 
that  influence? 

6.  Explain  the  process  by  which  leaders  become  more  or 
less  mythical,  and  its  value  to  society. 

7.  Can  you  give  examples  to  show  that  hope  may  make 
one  a  leader  when  he  lacks  other  qualifications? 

8.  Have  you  known  cases  where  mystery  played  a  great 
part  in  leadership? 

9.  Do  you  think  that  imposture  can  ever  contribute  to 
leadership  ? 

10.  Discuss  the  question  whether  particular  leaders  are 
essential,  in  the  sense  that  the  course  of  events  might  be 
notably  different  without  them. 

11.  What  would  you  say  of  the  proposition:  "Institu- 
tions are  the  shadows  of  great  men"? 

ON  CHAPTER  X 

1.  Recall,  if  you  can,  and  describe  your  own  experience  in 
deciding  some  question  of  right  or  wrong.  Just  what  sort 
of  a  conflict  is  there,  and  how  is  it  settled? 

2.  May  the  decision  of  conscience  be  opposed  to  that  of 
formal  reasoning?     Why? 

3.  If  the  wrong  is  the  irrational,  how  do  you  explain  the 
fact  that  we  often  do  it? 

446 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

4.  Do  the  Bible,  the  law,  and  other  conventional  standards 
of  right  influence  conscience?     If  so,  how? 

5.  When  and  why  is  the  right  the  onward?  When  and 
why  is  it  the  habitual  or  static?  Can  you  give  illustrations 
from  your  observation?  Would  you  expect  to  find  that 
Chinese  views  of  right  are  changing  nowadays  in  this  respect  ? 

6.  To  what  extent  do  you  think  we  should  act  by  a  rule 
or  principle  in  a  moral  crisis? 

7.  "Wrong  is  acting  for  ourselves:  right  is  acting  for 
others."  What  do  you  think  of  this  principle?  Can  you 
frame  one  you  think  better? 

8.  Which  has  more  influence  on  conscience,  sentiment  or 
sensation  ?    Why  ? 

9.  What  would  be  meant  by  calling  conscience  a  synthesis 
of  our  social  relations? 

10.  What  examples  can  you  give  of  the  influence  of  leader- 
ship on  conscience? 

11.  Explain  and  illustrate  the  action  of  publicity  on  one's 
conscience.     When  may  this  action  be  degrading? 

12.  How  may  prayer  be  interpreted  by  social  psychology? 

13.  How  far  and  why,  in  your  opinion,  does  conscience 
require  us  to  tell  the  truth? 

14.  Must  one  have  imagination  in  order  to  be  good?  Ex- 
plain your  view. 

15.  Do  you  find  that  ideal  persons  of  any  sort  influence 
your  conscience?     Give  your  experience. 

16.  Why  do  ideals  of  right  vary  with  the  group?  Give 
examples  from  your  observation. 

17.  Why  are  some  ideals  of  right  nearly  universal?  Il- 
lustrate. 

ON  CHAPTER  XI 

1.  How  are  ideas  of  good  or  bad,  as  applied  to  persons, 
related  to  social  growth  or  evolution  ?  Does  progress  imply 
degeneracy? 

2.  May  there  be  difficulty  in  distinguishing  degeneracy 

447 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

from  greatness?     Why?     Can  you  give  examples  of  men  of 
genius  punished  as  criminals? 

3.  How  far  is  it  possible  to  distinguish  between  hereditary 
and  social  degeneracy?  When  would  you  stress  the  social 
causes  and  when  the  hereditary? 

4.  Describe  one  or  more  degenerate  persons  you  know 
with  a  view  to  showing  what  is  wrong  with  their  minds. 

5.  Do  you  think  that  one's  social  experience  might  be 
such  as  to  prevent  the  formation  of  any  settled  ideas  of  right  ? 
Explain  your  view. 

6.  What  sorts  of  wrong-doers  suffer  pangs  of  conscience? 
What  sorts  do  not? 

7.  Describe  an  example  of  group  degeneracy  from  your 
observation,  showing  how  the  conscience  of  the  individual 
is  involved  in  it. 

8.  Why  do  we  feel  resentment  against  crime  but  not  against 
insanity  or  idiocy?     How  does  the  social  self  enter  into  this? 

9.  Just  what  is  the  practical  effect  of  the  organic  view  of 
conduct  upon  responsibility?     Illustrate. 

10.  What  is  the  bearing  of  the  organic  view  upon  blame 
and  punishment?  Under  what  conditions  may  they  do 
good?     When  may  they  do  harm? 

ON  CHAPTER  XII 

1.  What  would  you  give  as  the  popular  idea  of  freedom? 
What  different  idea  arises  from  the  organic  view  of  the 
individual? 

2.  How  do  you  understand  the  relation  of  freedom  to 
control?  Give  examples  from  your  observation  of  free  and 
unfree  control.  Would  you  class  control  by  propaganda,  as 
in  time  of  war,  as  free  or  unfree? 

3.  Explain  the  relation  of  freedom  to  organization. 

4.  Many  think  that  the  American  Indian  was  freer  than 
the  factory  worker  of  our  society.     What  is  your  view  ? 

5.  What  notably  unfree  conditions  do  you  find  in  your 
own  home  town? 

448 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

6.  Have  you  noticed  in  college  life  or  elsewhere  that  free- 
dom sometimes  leads  to  degeneracy?     Describe  instances. 

7.  How  would  you  answer  the  question:  Is  this  a  free 
country? 

8.  What  tests  would  you  apply  to  decide  whether  England 
or  the  United  States  was  the  freer  country? 

GENERAL  QUESTIONS 

1.  In  what  essential  respects,  if  any,  has  the  study  of  this 
subject  modified  your  ideas? 

2.  How  does  the  "organic  view"  of  the  individual  per- 
vading this  book  differ  from  the  view  j^ou  previously  had? 
Discuss  its  practical  importance. 

3.  What  idea  of  the  meaning  and  importance  of  individu- 
ality do  you  get  from  your  study? 


449 


INDEX 


Adolescence,  the  self  in,  200 
Affectation,  202  ff.,  352 
Altruism,  39,  124;  in  relation  to 

egoism,  126  ff.,  148,  222  ff., 

374  ff. 
Ambition,  306  f. 
Americanism,  unconscious,  71 
Anger,  25  f.;  development  of, 

264  ff.;  animal,  272 
Anglo-Saxons,      cantankerous- 

ness  of,  299;  idealism  of,  321 
Antipathy,  267  ff . 
Appreciation,  necessary  to  pro- 
duction, 92 
Art,   creative  impulse  in,  92; 

personal  symbols  in,  107  ff.; 

mental  life  a  work  of,  157  f.; 

plastic,  mystery  in,  348  f . ;  as 

idealization,  398 
Ascendancy,  personal,  317-357 
Asceticism,  185,  249 
Athletics,  organized  rivalry  in, 

308 
Augustine,  St.,  248 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  on  freedom 

of  thought,  71 ;  self-feeling  of, 

248 
Author,  an,  as  leader,  336  ff . 
Authority,  personal,  in  morals, 

383  ff.,  414.     See  also  Lead- 
ership. 

Baldwin,  Prof.  J.  M.,  52;  on 
social  persons,  125;  207,  302, 
320 

Bastien-Lepage,  385 


Belief,  ascendancy  of,  343  f., 

350  f. 
Beowulf,  on  honor,  240  f. 
Bismarck,  285;  ascendancy  of, 

329,  331 
Blame,  nature  of,  417  ff. 
Blowitz,  M.  de,  331 
Body,  relation  of,  to  the  self, 

175  f.,  194 
Booth,  Charles,  306 
Brotherhood,  extension  of  the 

sense  of,  144  f. 
Brown,  John,  407 
Browning,  349 
Bryant,  Sophie,  on  antipathy, 

267 
Bryce,  Prof.  James,  75,  342 
Burke,  Edmund,  233,  335  f. 
Burroughs,  John,  on  the  physi- 
ognomy of  works  of  genius, 

109 

Caesar,  as  a  personal  idea,  133 

Cant,  353 

Capitalism,  310 

Casaubon,  Mr.,  254  f. 

Chagrin,  273 

Charity,  270,  375.  See  also  Al- 
truism, Right 

Chicago,  aspect  of  the  crowd 
in,  74 

Child,  Theodore,  385 

Child,  a,  unlovable  at  birth,  82 

Children,  imitation  in,  56  ff.; 
sociability  of,  81  ff.;  imagi- 
nary conversation  of,  88  ff.; 


451 


INDEX 


study  of  expression  by,  97  ff . ; 
growth  of  sentiment  in,  114 
ff.;  development  of  self  in, 
174,  177;  use  of  "1"  by,  189 
ff.;  reflected  self  in,  196  ff.; 
anger  of,  264  f . ;  hero-worship 
of,  313;  ascendancy  over, 
322  f . ;  habitual  morality  in, 
371  f . ;  moral  growth  of,  379 
ff.;  causes  of  degeneracy  in, 
409,  416;  what  constitutes 
freedom  for,  425  f.,  428,  431; 
spoiled,  433 

China,  organization  of,  429 

Chinese,  European  lack  of 
moral  sense  regarding,  392 

Choice,  in  relation  to  sugges- 
tion, 51-80 

Christ,  self -feeling  of,  174;  in- 
dignation felt  by,  278;  as 
leader,  356;  as  moral  au- 
thority, 384 

"Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy 
Life,"  70 

Church,  inculcation  of  personal 
authority  in  the,  383;  free- 
dom in  the,  427,  432 

City  life,  effect  upon  sympathy, 
146  f. 

Class  atmospheres,  72  ff. 

Classes,  social,  13  f.,  18 

Collectivism,  39 

Columbus,  299,  339 

Communicate,  the  impulse  to, 
92  ff. 

Communication,  of  sentiment, 
138  f.;  effect  of  modern,  145; 
influence  of  means  of,  390, 
428 

Competition,  275,  287  f. 

Confession,  90  f.,  386  f. 

Conformity,  293  ff. 

Conscience,  47,  211,  233,  276, 
280,  289;  social  aspect  of, 
358-401;  in  degeneracy,  413 


ff.;  is  the  test  of  freedom, 
etc.,  426.     See  also  Right 

Conservatism,  304 

"Continued  Stories,"  396  f. 

Controversy,  274 

Conversation,  imaginary,  88 
ff.,  389,  391 

Country  life,  effect  upon  sym- 
pathy, 146 

Creeds,  the  nature  and  use  of, 
399 

Crime  and  heredity,  18;  treat- 
ment of,  262,  283;  as  degen- 
eracy, 412,  415  ff.;  and  in- 
sanity, 417  ff. 

Criminal  impulses,  nature  of, 
410  f. 

Cromwell,  329 

Crowd-feeling,  325  f. 

Crowds,  suggestibility  of,  77 

Culture,  relation  of,  to  social 
organization,  151  f. 

Dagnan,  385 

Dante,  67  f.,  219 

Darwin,  Charles,  12,  23,  26, 
102,  103,  196,  207,  222,  275, 
313;  power  as  a  writer,  337, 
355,  403 

"Das  ewig  Weibliche,"  202,  345 

Degeneracy,  from  too  much 
choice,  76,  147;  self -feeling 
in,  259  ff.;  personal,  402-421; 
incidental  to  freedom,  433  f. 

Delusions  of  greatness  and  of 
persecution,  259  f. 

Democracy  of  sentiment,  147 

Descartes,  seclusion  of,  228 

Determinism,  39 

Dialogue,  composing  in,  91  f. 

Diaries,  as  intercourse,  92; 
moral  effect  of,  387  f. 

Dill's  "Roman  Society,"  344 

Discipline,  in  relation  to  free- 
dom, 426  f. 


452 


INDEX 


Disraeli,  B.,  249,  348 

Divorce,  increase  of,  incidental 
to  freedom,  433 

Double  causation  theory  of  so- 
ciety, 43  f. 

Dreams,  as  imaginary  conver- 
sation, 90 

Duplicity,  266 

Duty,  sense  of,  See  Conscience 

Economics,  influence  of  a  nar- 
row, 311 

Education,  culture  in,  150  f.;  as 
freedom,  425,  427.  See  also 
Children 

Ego,  the  empirical,  168;  the 
metaphysical,  169,  194;  and 
alter  in  morals,  374  ff . 

Egoism,  39;  and  altruism,  126 
ff.,  216  ff.,  374  ff. 

Egotism,  126,  211  ff. ;  as  a  men- 
tal trait,  217  ff.;  varieties  of, 
218  ff.;  as  degeneracy,  412  f. 

Element  of  society,  167 

Eliot,  George,  208,  254,  294, 
346,  385 

Eloquence,  334  ff. 

Emerson,  E.  W.,  396 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  41,  93,  154, 
160,  205,  241,  275,  297,  299, 
320,  328,  367,  395,  396 

Emulation,  293-316 

Endogenous  minds,  231  f.,  414 

Environment,  301 ;  and  hered- 
ity, 6  ff.,  15,  16  f.,  407  f.  See 
also  Suggestion 

Equilibrium  mobile  of  con- 
science, 366 

Ethics,  physiological  theories 
of,  239  f.  See  also  Con- 
science Right 

Eugenics,  12  ff. 

Evolution,  45,  47,  50,  54,  177; 
in  relation  to  leadership,  354; 
to  degeneracy,  404  ff. 


Evolutionary  point  of  view,  3 
f.,  35,  50 

Exhaustion,  causes  suggesti- 
bility, 78 

Exogenous  minds,  231  f.,  414 

Experience,  social,  is  imagina- 
tive, 132  f. 

Expression,  emotional,  26;  fa- 
cial, 97  ff.;  vocal,  101  f.; 
interpretation  of,  102  f.  sug- 
gestion of,  in  literature  and 
art,  107  ff. 

Eye,  expressiveness  of,  98  f . ;  in 
literature,  108 

Face.     See  Expression 

Fame,  often  transcends  the 
man,  340  f. 

Family,  freedom  in  the,  427 

Fear,  25  f.,  of  animals,  101;  so- 
cial, 289  ff. 

Feeling.     See  Sentiment 

Findlay,  Professor,  28 

Fitzgerald,  Edward,  seclusive- 
ness  of,  430 

Forms,  used  to  maintain  ascen- 
dancy, 351 

Fox,  Charles,  336 

Fra  Angelico,  279,  384 

Francis,  St.,  83 

Freedom,  9;  cooperative,  49  f.; 
lack  of  in  industry,  311;  422- 
434 

Free-will,  39,  49  f.,  55,  66 

Friendship,  153  f. 

Frith's  "Autobiography,"  111 

Galton,  Francis,  18 

Games,  athletic,  287 

Genius,  18,  41,  140,  200,  219; 
disorders  of  self  incident  to, 
258  f.;  269,  297,  354  ff.  See 
also  Leadership 

Gibbon,  Edward,  303 

Gibson,  W.  H.,  339 


453 


INDEX 


Giddings,  Prof.  F.  H.,  on  imi- 
tation, 63 

Gloating,  174 

God,  as  love,  159  f.;  appropri- 
ated, 186;  as  ideal  self,  244; 
idea  of,  314  f.,  400  f.  See 
also  Religion 

Gods,  famous  persons  partake 
of  the  nature  of,  341 

Goethe,  on  individuality  in  art, 
69;  on  the  composition  of 
"Werther,"  91;  personality 
in  his  style,  110;  154,  155, 
165,  181,  225,  227,  235,  241, 
273,  285,  297,  314,  345,  349, 
422 

Gothic  architecture,  rise  of,  74 

Grant,  General,  78,112;  ascen- 
dancy of,  332  f.,  347 

Gregarious  instinct,  28  f. 

Groups,  self  of,  209  f.;  degen- 
eracy of,  416 

Gummere,  F.  B.,  240 

Guyau,  on  the  onward  self, 
367  f. 

Habit,  limits  suggestibility,  79; 
in  relation  to  the  self,  187;  to 
the  sense  of  right,  368  ff.,  379 

Hall,  President  G.  Stanley,  109; 
on  the  self,  194,  290 

Hamerton,  P.  G.,  228,  349 

Hamlet,  use  of  "I"  in,  176 

Hatred,  284 

Hazlitt,  W.,  284 

Hedonizing,  instinctive,  96 

Herbert,  George,  186 

Hereditary  element  in  socia- 
bility, 86 

Hereditary  tendency,  318  ff. 

Heredity  and  environment,  4 
ff . ;  human  and  animal,  19  ff . ; 
as  a  cause  of  degeneracy,  407 
ff. 


Heroism,  370 

Hero-worship,  243,  312  ff., 
320  f. 

History,  nature  of,  3  ff .,  30  f. 

Honor,  238  ff . 

Hope,  ascendancy  of,  343  f. 

Hostility,  264-292 

Howells,  W.  D.,  334 

Hugo,  Victor,  259 

Human  nature,  general  discus- 
sion of,  31  ff. 

Humility,  243  ff. 

Huxley,  Thomas,  274  f.,  338 

Hysterical  temperament,  375, 
412  f. 

"I,"  in  relation  to  love,  162  ff.; 
the  reflected  or  looking-glass, 
183  f.,  196  ff .,  206,  209,  240, 
246  f.,  380  ff.;  meaning  of, 
168-210;  exists  within  the 
general  life,  175  ff. ;  as  related 
to  the  rest  of  thought,  179  f . ; 
inanimate  objects  as,  183;  is 
rooted  in  the  social  order, 
185  ff.;  how  children  learn 
the  meaning  of,  189  ff.;  vari- 
ous phases  of,  211-263;  use 
of  in  literature  and  conversa- 
tion, 222  ff . ;  in  self -reverence, 
241;  in  leadership,  328 

Ideal  persons,  as  factors  in  con- 
science, 392  ff.;  of  religion, 
314  ff.,  398  ff. 

Idealism,  ascendancy  of,  343 

Idealization,  312,  392  ff. 

Ideas,  personal.  See  Personal 
ideas 

Idiocy,  congenital,  408;  as  men- 
tal degeneracy,  411 

Idiots,  kindliness  of,  87  f.,  158 

Imaginary  conversation,  of 
children,  88  f . ;  all  thought  is, 
90  ff. 

Imaginary  playmate,  88  f. 


454 


INDEX 


Imagination,  in  relation  to  per- 
sonal ideas,  112  f.,  132  ff.;  the 
locus  of  society,  134;  social,  a 
requisite  to  power,  140;  nar- 
rowness of,  in  egotism,  214; 
essential  to  goodness,  389 

Imitation,  51  ff. ;  in  children, 
56  ff.;  not  mechanical,  61  ff.; 
by  parents,  61  f.;  in  relation 
to  smiling,  84  f . ;  99,  106,  293, 
297,  301 ;  the  doctrine  of  ob- 
jectionable, 302;  342,  369 

Imitative  instinct,  the  sup- 
posed, 62  ff. 

Immortality,  self-feeling  in  the 
idea  of,  186  f. 

Imposture,  351  ff. 

Indifferentism,  419. 

Indignation,  273,  280  ff. 

Individual,  the,  in  relation  to 
society,  35-50,  356  f.,  422;  as 
a  cause,  354  f . ;  and  social,  in 
morals,  373  ff. 

Individualism,  39  ff .,  44,  45,  48 

Individuality,  Goethe's  view  of, 
in  art,  69 

Industrial  system,  effect  of 
upon  the  individual,  151  f. 

Insane,  reverence  for  the,  347 

Insanity,  in  relation  to  sym- 
pathy, 144;  the  self  in,  259  f.; 
and  crime,  417  ff. 

Instinctive  emotion,  24  ff. 

Instincts,  in  human  life,  22  ff.; 
whether  divisible  into  social 
and  unsocial,  46  f. 

Institution,  ideal  persons  may 
become  an,  398  f. 

Institutions,  in  relation  to  sym- 
pathy, 166;  growth  of  free- 
dom in,  426 

Inter  course,  relation  to  thought , 
92  f. 

Interlocutor,  imaginary,  drawn 
from  the  environment,  89  f. 


Invention,  302  f.,  369.    See  also 

Imitation 
Involuntary,  the,  why  ignored, 

66  f.     See  also  Will 

James,  Henry,  214,  268,  346 

James,  Prof.  William,  on  social 
persons,  125;  on  the  self,  170; 
175,  306,  322,  389 

Jerome,  St.,  49,  186 

Jowett,  Prof.,  314 

Justice,  the  sentiment  of,  125; 
based  on  sympathy,  142;  re- 
lation to  love,  160;  268,  382, 
395 

Kempis,  Thomas  a,  70,  161, 
186,  244,  248,  250  f.,  256 

Labor  Question,  261,  311 

Lamb,  Charles,  111,  223;  liter- 
ary power  of,  339  f . 

Language  involves  an  inter- 
locutor, 91  f.  See  also  Ex- 
pression 

Leader,  mental  traits  of  a,  327 
ff. ;  does  he  really  lead?  354 

Leadership,  140  f.,  206,317-357 

Learoyd,  Mabel  W.,  396 

Lecky,  W.  H.,  253 

Leonardo,  mystery  of,  349 

Likeness  and  difference  in  sym- 
pathy, 153  f. 

Lincoln,  118 

Literature,  creative  impulse  in, 
92;  personal  symbols  in,  107 
ff.;  self -feeling  in,  224  f.; 
ascendancy  in,  336  ff.;  mys- 
tery in,  348 

Lombroso,  Prof.  Cesare,  259 

Love,  of  the  sexes,  25,  155  f.; 
and  sympathy,  157  ff . ;  scope 
of,  159  f.;  nature  of,  160  ff.; 
Thomas  a  Kempis  and  Emer- 
son on,  161 ;  two  kinds  of,  162 


45.' 


INDEX 


ff.;  and  self,  162  ff.;  187  ff., 

226;  as  a  social  ideal,  279  f.; 

of  enemies,  283;  342,  345 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  173,  296,  300,  432 
Luther,  Martin,  212  f.,  351 
Lying,  in  relation  to  sympathy, 

143,  388  f. 

M.,  a  child  of  the  author,  60, 
63,  83,  97  ff.,  1S9  ff.,  196  f., 
380 

Macaulay,  physiognomy  in  his 
style,  112 

McDougall,  Professor,  27 

Machinery,  effect  of  upon  the 
workman,  151  f. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  295 

Man  of  the  world,  traits  of  the 
contemporary,  286 

Manners,  conformity  in,  293  f.; 
as  an  aid  to  ascendancy,  351 

Marshall,  H.  R.,  363 

Material  bent  of  our  civiliza- 
tion, 71,  432 

Maudsley,  Dr.,  on  degeneracy, 
411 

Meredith,  George,  214 

Michelangelo,  111,  343,  384 

Middle  Ages,  suggestibility  in 
the,  73 

Milieu,  power  of  the,  70  ff. 

Milton,  108 

Moltke,  silence  of,  347 

Monasticism,  in  relation  to  the 
self,  249  f.,  257  f. 

Montaigne,  on  the  need  to  com- 
municate, 92;  111,  222,  223 

Moore,  K.  C.,  on  the  smiling  of 
infants,  82 

Morality.  See  Conscience, 
Right 

Motley,  J.  L.,  109 

Murder,  415 

Music,  sensuous  mystery  of, 
350 


Mystery,  a  factor  in  ascen- 
dancy, 344  ff . 

Nansen,  299 

Napoleon,  how  we  know  him, 
121;  ascendancy  of,  330; 
place  in  history,  356 

New  Testament,  174,  245,  277 

Nietzsche,  29 

Nirvana,  the  ideal  of  disinter- 
ested love,  163 

Non-conformity,  293  ff. 

Non-resistance,  doctrine  of, 
276  ff. 

Norsemen,  motive  of,  303 

Norton,  Prof.  C.  E.,  74 

"One,"  use  of,  compared  with 
"I,"  224  f. 

Onward,  right  as  the,  366  ff. 

Opposition,  personal,  its  na- 
ture, 130  f.;  spirit  of,  298  ff. 

Oratory,  ascendancy  in,  334  ff . 

Organic  view,  of  the  individual, 
35  f . ;  questions  relating  to, 
47  ff.;  in  relation  to  respon- 
sibility, 419  ff. 

Organization,  of  personal 
thought,  87;  effect  of  upon 
the  individual,  145  ff . ;  or 
vital  process,  problem  of,  364 

Originality,  354  ff.  See  also 
Genius,  Leadership,  Inven- 
tion 

Other-worldism,  252 

Painting,  personal  symbols  in, 
107  f .  See  also  Art,  Expres- 
sion 

Papacy,  symbolic  character  of, 
341  f. 

Particularism,  29,  39 

Pascal,  248,  252 

Passion,  why  a  cause  of  pain, 
285  f.;  influence  upon  idea  of 
right,  362  f. 


456 


INDEX 


Pater,  Walter,  337 

Patriotism,  210 

Patten,  Prof.  Simon  N.,  275 

Paul,  St.,  248 

Perez,  Dr.  B.,  S2  f.;  on  the  eye, 
98  i.;  265,  381 

Personal  authority,  influence 
upon  sense  of  right,  383  ff . 

Personal  character,  interpreta- 
tion of,  102,  105;  communi- 
cation of,  106  f. 

Personal  ideas,  97  ff . ;  sensuous 
nucleus  of,  104  ff . ;  sentiment 
their  chief  content,  114  ff., 
133;  compared  to  a  system  of 
lights,  131  f.;  affect  the  phys- 
ical organism,  133  f.;  affect 
the  sense  of  right,  379  ff. 

Personal  symbols  in  art  and 
literature,  107  ff . 

Persons,  real  and  imaginary, 
inseparable,  95  f.;  incor- 
poreal, their  social  reality, 
122;  social,  interpenetrate 
one  another,  124  ff . ;  ideal,  as 
factors  in  conscience,  392  ff . ; 
ideal,  of  religion,  314  ff.,  398 
ff. 

Philanthropy,  motive  of,  300  f . 

Pioneer,  self-feeling  of  the,  299 

Pity,  is  it  altruism?  129;  rela- 
tion to  sympathy,  137  f . ;  270 

Power,  based  on  sympathy,  140 
f.;  idea  of,  324;  advantage  of 
visible  forms  of,  325  f.  See 
also  Ascendancy 

Prayer,  as  personal  intercourse, 
387 

Pretense,  contempt  of,  in 
America,  324 

Preyer,  W.,  63,  82 

Pride,  230  ff . 

Primitive  individualism,  45 

Principle,  moral,  370  f. 


Process,  social,  4  ff .,  imitation, 
etc.,  as,  302;  vital,  problem 
of,  364 

Processes,  social,  reflected  in 
sympathy,  153  ff. 

Progress,  relation  of  to  hered- 
ity, 14  f.,  30  f.;  to  freedom, 
425 

Psychoanalysis,  25,  29,  262  f. 

Publicity,  moral  effect  of,  386 
ff. 

Punishment,  283,  418,  420  f. 

R.,  a  child  of  the  author,  58  ff ., 
64,  85  f.,  87,  89,  190  ff.,  372, 
381 

Race  questions,  10,  14,  17,  262 

Race-suicide,  13 

Rational,  right  as  the,  358  ff . 

Reason  and  instinct,  29  ff. 

Recapitulation  theory  of  men- 
tal development,  57 

Refinement,  as  affecting  hos- 
tility, 269 

Religion,  solitary,  49;  suggesti- 
bility in,  79,  80;  self-feeling 
of  founders  of,  213;  self- 
discipline  in,  244  f.,  248  ff.; 
as  hero-worship,  314  ff.; 
mediaeval,  342;  mystery  in, 
350;  ideal  persons  of,  398  ff. 

Remorse,  285,  360,  398,  415  f. 

Repentance,  398 

Resentment,  230,  242,  266  ff . 

Resistance,  imaginative,  278  ff . 

Responsibility,  in  crime,  etc., 
418  ff. 

Right,  based  on  sympathy,  142 
ff.;  relation  to  egotism,  216; 
to  the  self  in  general,  220 ;  so- 
cial standards  of,  as  affecting 
hostility,  287  ff.;  as  the  ra- 
tional, 358  ff.;  conscience  the 
final  test  of,  365  f . ;  as  the  on- 
ward, 366  ff . ;  as  habit,  338  ff ., 


457 


INDEX 


379;  as  a  phase  of  the  self, 
373  f . ;  the  social  as  opposed 
to  the  sensual,  378  f . ;  action 
of  personal  ideas  in  forming 
the  sense  of,  379  ff . ;  as  a  mi- 
crocosm of  character,  382; 
reflects  a  social  group,  390 
ff.,  401;  and  wrong,  402  ff.; 
idea  of,  407;  universal  ideals 
of,  416;  freedom  as,  423  ff. 

Riis,  Jacob  A.,  391 

Rivalry,  305  ff.;  in  service,  308 
ff.;  conditions  of,  310  f. 

Roget's  "Thesaurus,"  229 

Roman  Empire,  344,  429 

Rousseau,  269,  291 

Rule  of  conduct,  Marshall's, 
363 

Ruskin,  349 

Russia,  429 

Sanity,  based  on  sympathv, 
144 

Savonarola,  physiognomy  of, 
347 

Schiller,  147,  154 

Science,  and  faith,  339;  cant  of, 
353;  moral,  limits  of,  366; 
physical,  432 

Sculpture,  personal  symbols  in, 
107  f. 

Seclusion,  moral  effect  of,  388 

Secretiveness,  93,  227 

"Seeing  yourself,"  397  f. 

Selection,  biological,  10  ff.;  in 
sympathy,  155  ff. 

Selective  method  of  nature, 
402  f. 

Self,  in  relation  to  other  per- 
sonal ideas,  126  ff.,  132;  an- 
tithesis with  "other,"  148, 
220  ff.;  in  morals,  395  f.;  in 
relation  to  love,  162  ff.,  187 
ff.,  226;  inanimate  objects  as, 
183;  social,  168-263 ;  observa- 


tion of  in  children,  189  ff.; 
of  a  group,  209  f . ;  the  narrow 
or  egotistical,  211  ff. ;  every 
cherished  idea  is  a,  217;  re- 
flected or  looking-glass,  183 
f.,  196  ff.,  206,  208,  240,  246 
f . ;  in  social  problems,  260  ff . ; 
influence  of  upon  conscience, 
380  ff.;  maladies  of  the  so- 
cial, 246;  transformation  of, 
253  ff.;  effect  of  uncongenial 
environment  upon,  256  ff.; 
275,  352;  crescive,  367;  ethi- 
cal, 373  f.;  ideal  social,  389, 
396  ff. 

Self-control,  285 

Self-feeling,  25,  169  ff.;  quota- 
tions illustrating,  173  f.;  of 
reformers,  etc.,  212;  intense, 
essential  to  production,  224 
ff . ;  control  of,  248  ff . ;  in  men- 
tal disorder,  etc.,  259  f.;  in 
non-conformity,  298 

Self-image  as  a  work  of  art,  237 

Self-neglecting,  226 

Self-reliance,  327  ff. 

Self-respect,  236  ff.,  270 

Self -reverence,  241  ff. 

Self-sacrifice,  220,  367.  See 
also  Humility,  Altruism 

Selfishness,  nature  of,  211  ff. ;  as 
a  mental  trait,  217  ff. 

"Sense  of  other  persons,"  207 

Sensual,  as  opposed  to  the  so- 
cial, 378  f. 

Sensuality,  214 

Sentiment,  personal,  genesis  of, 

114  ff.;  is  differentiated  emo- 
tion, 115;  in  personal  ideas, 

115  ff.;  relation  to  persons, 
117;  more  communicable 
than  sensation,  136  f.;  moral, 
357  ff.;  417 

Sentiments,  as  related  to  sel- 
fishness, 212;  literary,  391 


458 


INDEX 


Seven  deadly  sins,  410 

Sex,  in  sympathy,  155  f.;  in  the 
self,  202  ff. 

Shakespeare,  46,  108,  111;  on 
the  genesis  of  sentiment,  115 
f.;  137,  140,  173,  177,  179, 
219,  226,  241,  286,  316 

Shame,  fear  of,  291  f.;  sense  of, 
380 

"Sheridan's  Ride,"  325 

Sherman,  General,  333 

Shinn,  Miss,  198 

Sidis,  Dr.  B.,  73 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  118 

Silence,  fascination  of,  347  f. 

Simplicity,  205 

Sin,  405,  410 

Sincerity  in  leadership,  350  ff. 

Smiles,  earliest,  82  ff.;  interpre- 
tation of,  100  f. 

Sociability  and  personal  ideas, 
81-135 

"Social,"  meanings  of  the 
word,  38  f. 

Social  faculty  view,  46  f. 

Social  groups,  sensible  basis  of 
the  idea  of,  113;  relation  of  to 
the  individual,  144 

Social  order,  reflected  in  sym- 
pathy, 144  ff . ;  freedom  in  re- 
lation to,  427  ff . 

Social  reality,  the  immediate  is 
the  personal  idea,  119 

Socialism,  39  ff.,  124 

Society,  and  the  individual,  35- 
50,  166  f.,  354  f.;  in  morals, 
373  ff.,  423:  is  primarily  a 
mental  fact,  119;  is  a  relation 
among  personal  ideas,  119; 
each  mind  an  aspect  of,  119 
f.;  the  idea  of,  120;  must  be 
studied  in  the  imagination, 
120  ff. ;  is  the  collective  as- 
pect   of    personal    thought, 


134;  a  phase,  not  a  separable 
thing,  135 

Sociology,  too  much  based  on 
material  notions,  120,  124  f., 
132  ff. ;  must  observe  per- 
sonal ideas,  120  ff.;  deals 
with  personal  intercourse  in 
primary  and  secondary  as- 
pects, 135 

Solitude,  apparent,  48  f.,  92 

Sophocles,  173 

Spanish-American  war,  con- 
solidating effect  of,  326 

Specialization,  effect  of,  148  ff. 

Speech,  16.  See  also  Expres- 
sion 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  egoism 
and  altruism,  126  f.;  nature 
of  his  system,  127;  on  prog- 
ress, 429 

Spencerism,  339 

Stability  and  instability  in  the 
self,  230  ff . 

Stable  and  unstable  types  of 
mind,  218  ff.,  230  ff.,  411  f. 

Stanley,  Prof.  H.  M.,  63,  170, 
232,  244 

Sterne,  L.,  225 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  physiognomy 
in  his  style,  113;  123,  129, 
223,  226,  291,  352,  386 

Strain  of  the  present  age,  146  f. 

Struggle  for  existence,  as  a  view 
of  life,  303 

Style,  the  personal  idea  in,  107 
ff.;  what  it  is,  109;  personal 
ascendancy  in,  336  ff. 

Stylites,  St.  Simeon,  49 

Suger,  the  Abbot,  74 

Suggestibility,  76  ff. 

Suggestion,  and  choice,  51-80; 
definition  of,  51;  in  children, 
56  ff.;  contrary,  59,  298; 
scope  of  in  life,  65  ff. 

Sumner,  Wm.  G.,  400 


459 


INDEX 


Superficiality  of  the  time,  145, 
229 

Symbols,  personal,  103  ff.;  in 
art  and  literature,  107  ff. 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  187,  200  f.,  314, 
349 

Sympathies,  reflect  the  social 
order,  145  ff. 

Sympathy,  or  understanding  as 
an  aspect  of  society,  136-166; 
meaning  of,  136  IT.;  as  com- 
passion, 136;  a  measure  of 
personality,  140  ff.;  univer- 
sal, 147  f . ;  reflects  social  proc- 
esses, 153  ff.;  selective,  155 
ff. ;  and  love,  157  ff.;  a  par- 
ticular expression  of  society, 
165  ff.;  hostile,  191,  266  ff.; 
in  leadership,  324  ff.;  lack  of, 
in  degeneracy,  412;  with 
criminal  acts  a  test  of  re- 
sponsibility, 417  ff. 

Tact,  215  f. ;  in  ascendancy, 
328  f. 

Tarde,  G.,  52,  302 

"Tasso,"  quoted,  155,  181 

Teachability  of  human  hered- 
ity, 19  ff.,  29  ff.,  34 

Tennyson,  162,  241,  321,  350 

Tests,  mental,  15  f. 

Thackeray,  111,  223 

Thoreau,  H.  D.,  his  relation  to 


society,  93  f.,  429  f.;  188,  223, 
227,  228,  267,  276,  301 

Thorndike,  Professor,  32 

Toleration,  294  f. 

Truth,  motive  for  telling,  388  f. 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  78,  347 

Vanity,  230,  234  ff. 
Variation,  degeneracy  as,  404  f. 

Wagner,  Richard,  111 

War,  and  instinct,  27  f . ;  hostile 
feeling  in,  288;  dramatic 
power  of  leadership  in,  324  f . 

War,  the  Great,  73,  210 

Washington,  118 

Whitman,  Walt,  223 

Will,  free,  39;  individual  and 
social,  53;  popular  view  of,  54; 
is  it  externally  determined? 
55  f.,  67  f.;  activity  of,  re- 
flects society,  75  f. 

William  the  Silent,  347 

Withdrawal,   physical,  249; 
imaginative,  250  ff . 

Wrong,  as  the  irrational,  361; 
emphasized  by  example,  386; 
degeneracy  as,  402  ff.;  idea 
of,  407;  not  always  opposed 
by  conscience,  415  f.;  the  un- 
free,  426 

Wundt,  on  "Ich,"  170 

Youth,  sense  of,  161,  312 


460 


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